When it comes to health, wellness and lifestyle decisions, one of the most influential entities after the doctor/family physician is the World Wide Web. Today is an era of the young, digitally empowered and demanding consumer, who is highly conscious of his likes and dislikes. This attitude of the consumer applies to all his decisions including health, wellness and lifestyle. The health marketers need to reach out and engage this consumer in ways that influences him or her the most. “Therein lies a huge need gap,” says Dr Simanta G. Sharma, Founder, MD and CEO of Healthon Infosoft Pvt. Ltd. (HOISCO), an emerging digital media entity that strives to become India’s most valued comprehensive interactive media house, providing online consumer engagement solutions to health marketers.

It was in May 2008, that Dr Simanta Sharma along with the other co-founders of the company, Ms Sharmistha Dey and Mr Jini Mathai, whose collective domain experience in the space of health and wellness is more than 30 years, developed the idea of HOISCO to fulfil this gap. The result of this endeavor is bolohealth.com, a consumer-focused health and wellness portal providing information, engagement and networking opportunities for users in the space of health and wellness.

It has only been six months since the launch of bolohealth.com and it has already generated a hugely encouraging response from netizens across India. “We are not reinventing the wheel. We are only augmenting an existing system with real value and smart innovations.
We are providing solutions, which we as marketers used to long for but as such solutions were not available during our time as healthcare marketers, so our initiative is to make marketers aware that we can be excellent partners to have on your side to create value for your product requirements through our initiatives and expertise,” says Mr Jini Mathai, Co-founder and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at HOISCO.

So while there might have been an emergence of quiet a few players in this field, what makes HOISCO stand apart is its unique business model which is not dependent on one entity or product offering; instead it encompasses several facets of the health and wellness market, and more importantly straddles the entire spectrum right from a healthcare consumer to addressing a healthcare provider and thereby the healthcare marketer.

Today, Healthon Infosoft focuses on three levers to provide consumer engagement solutions: