Ambee: Mobilising private ambulances in India- Client Success Story

At Ambee, we are on a mission to create the largest network of high quality private ambulances in India. Both awareness and access to healthcare transportation is poor in India. Private ambulances space is extremely fragmented and unorganized as there is no common platform to reach out to specific hospital or ambulance. Every hospital and ambulance owner having their own contact number makes it difficult for the common man in case of health emergencies. There’s no visibility into the location of the nearest hospital that can serve a user in need to help them get to a place of their choice. We want to change that and bring the standards of healthcare transportation in India on par with those in advanced economies.

We were lucky enough to get indulged in a conversation with the founders. They shared the overall journey of Ambee, from its idealization to implementation in partnership with Next Juggernaut. Let’s hear what the founders have to say:

Q1. Tell us a little about Ambee and your personal motivation for starting it?

Ambee started out of painful experiences that the founders went through. Losing a colleague to poor ambulance response who lived at the doorstep of some of the best hospitals in the city of Hyderabad, and difficulties in accessing decent ambulances while caring for a terminally ill mother, prompted the founders to dive into fixing the situation.

Q2. Can you give us a rundown of how Ambee works?

We are curating high quality hospitals and private ambulances, and enabling them with location tracking. We have mobile apps for drivers that can be used for navigation, communication and coordination.

Our suite of products (desktop and mobile) can be used by hospitals and ambulance fleet owners to manage their vehicles, drivers and trips. They can also tap into rest of the pool of ambulances when required.
Users can discover the nearest hospitals in an emergency and connect with them directly, as well as find the nearest private ambulance to fulfill non-emergency needs (scheduled visits, discharges etc), by calling us directly (+91 76 77 112 112), online (book.goambee.com) or using our mobile app.

Q3. What are the biggest challenges you have faced, how have you overcome these.

One of the biggest challenges is the incentives that exist in the system that create a resistance to using technology and a more efficient, transparent system. Poor quality of ambulances, non-adherence to standards laid out in law, and lack of awareness among the public about the importance of a paramedic and using ambulances in emergencies are also some of the hurdles. We have to overcome the hurdle of creating an awareness and inform users of the importance of accessing the right kind of response and care.

Q4. According to your experience, what is the most important thing to keep in mind for all on demand companies.

It sounds quite easy to organise a fragmented space and directly connect users and service providers. However, having a high quality among service providers, and ensuring good and consistent service is anything but easy. It’s critical to focus on these and get them right, before thinking of scaling.

Q5. Do you plan to launch services in new regions? If yes, what would be your strategy?

We are currently operational in Hyderabad and Bangalore in India. We intend to expand to other cities in India slowly but steadily, ensuring we set up robust operations in each of them.

Q6. Could you shed some light on the technology and tools used to build Ambee ?

We built our on-demand platform in partnership with Juggernaut. Partnering with someone who had experience in creating and scaling an on-demand platform helped us in speed-to-market.

Q7. What is one particular Marketing Tool or process you swear by that has helped you gain more users on the platform?

We are still in the early stages and are yet to see a significant growth. However our limited pilots and experiments have received very warm response. Based on our experience so far, we strongly believe that providing good quality of service, consistently is definitely the best way to get more users on the platform.

Q8. What sets you apart from the competition?

Strong focus on technology, depth of operations, and quality over quantity, since even a small misstep can have very significant consequences for our users.

Q9. What is your biggest achievement to date? How did you go about accomplishing this?

Both in technology and approach to market, we have been leading the way by innovating, iterating and zeroing in faster on what works and what does not. We have built a great team that is driven to bring about the change that we envision as a company, and that has been the key. Uber’s investment in us is a testimony to the strength of team we have built and ability to execute.

Q10. Where do you see yourself in five years?

We see ourselves being the leading private network of high quality ambulances not just in India, but across Asia, Africa and South America. We believe democratizing access to good healthcare transportation is a problem requiring to be solved in many parts of the world.