It was in late 2006 that Narayanan Ram, a serial entrepreneur, along with Dr. Anand Subra founded PurpleTeal, a company that focuses on hand holding individuals to help them improve their health. Watching the struggles of many people with regard to managing chronic medical conditions like diabetes and heart disease was the starting point for the founding of PurpleTeal.

The real-world difficulties of remembering and following the doctor’s orders after an appointment, or discharge instructions after a hospital stay, gave the founders the idea for a day to day hand-holding service to help people do a better job of self management. Ram and Subra thus set out to create a member-centric, scalable and low-cost service for the consumer.
So when it comes to self management, PurpleTeal helps customers by reminding them to take their medications on time as prescribed, taking body weight, BP, blood sugar and other readings, as instructed, taking problem-solving actions based on self observation of symptoms, and even making arrangements to go for prescribed treatments and procedures. The services offered by the company, which has a 40 member team, also include management of lifestyle habits like weight loss or smoking cessation as well as management of specific conditions like diabetes or pregnancy.

PurpleTeal’s service architecture uses a base package for wellness, on top of which member-specific service packages can be added to create a custom, personalized service set for each individual. Hand-holding is done by serving Interventions using SMS, Mobile Apps, Email, and Web or through any channel that is convenient to a given individual.

Today, PurpleTeal, which is located in Fremont, California, with its Indian subsidiary in Chennai, has served 4.5 million interventions so far and already has more than100, 000 paying subscribers. So, what makes this firm different? “Our services address the health concerns of the ‘whole’ individual, and not merely the specific conditions he or she has,” says Ram. The PurpleTeal service provides daily outreach to individuals through messages about health that they would find valuable and hence want to view. Also provided are multiple venues and ways for individuals to sign up and engage with the services, whether it is through paper, mobile phones, email or internet.

An insurance company can sponsor PurpleTeal’s service, offer it to its subscribers and use it to capture new subscribers. If it is positioned as a valuable health-based service that they can get by signing up with the sponsor, it provides something that is ‘different’ in order to attract new subscribers. “Existing subscribers, once they get used to the service, will be reluctant to switch to a competitor that does not offer this service, hence improving loyalty and retention,” says Dr. Subra.