EP34: Zynga, 1MG & making healthcare affordable and accessible in India {Gaurav of 1MG}

Stars & Startups

EP34: {Gaurav Agarwal, Co-founder of 1MG}

Healthcare is a coveted space for tech startups in India, not because it’s hard but because of the enormity of challenges you could solve. And the sheer size of white spaces that are available to be solved. 1MG is probably at the forefront of really understanding Indian health data with over 90 million users on their platforms.

I have a super fun chat with Gaurav Agarwal, the CTO & co-founder of 1MG on his time in the Valley, and how 1MG is working towards making healthcare affordable and accessible.

Gaurav's book recommendation: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari & A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

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We chat about his time at Zynga and how he transitioned to 1MG and moving back to India after almost a decade in the Valley. Also about the interesting work that's being done at 1MG and also his ability to use technology to completely change the way we look at healthcare.

Some Interesting facts:

At 1mg, their healthcare data repository consists of over 5 Billion data points and process over 250GB of additional data. Likely, one of the largest healthcare data repos globally. 1MG has created a Data Science team that works on problems like AI Doctor assistant, Digitization and Disease Progression. With all the learning from the data, they recently published a paper in the JMIR (Journal of Medical Informatics Research) about the Triage AI system that proved their system is as good or better than a panel of doctors!

The venture is supported by marque investors in Sequoia Capital, Intel Capital, Omidyar Network and Kae Capital.

Stay Safe & please share the episode!

- V (@varunvummidi)

Timeline:

01:00 - Working at Zynga - the true casual gaming

05:58 - Moving from NetApp to Zynga after 9 years

10:50 - Building for Gaming

15:25 - Removing limitations on what you can do

18:05 - Centre of Product

20:10 - Building Product in India vs Valley

23:21 - Moving to HealthKart from Zynga

28:27 - Bringing in Valley Execs

31:02 - Seed for 1MG

37:10 - Evolution of 1MG - building Triage.ai

44:15 - Managing Chronic Care

48:10 - Choosing not to do certain businesses

49:30 - Launching Connected Products for Monitoring

57:41 - Fighter Pilot vs an Entrepreneur

59:00 - Book Reccos