CureJoy – Online Marketplace Matching Experts & Users of Natural Health & Wellness – Techstory

CureJoy is a buzzing community and an online destination for Natural Health and Wellness, where people can find fresh and credible content, answers to some of the common health questions and health advice from Experts. Most of the content is based on the present day needs of quick consumption Anywhere – Anytime. For Natural and Alternative Health Experts, it is a platform to reach out to the relevant users who are looking for genuine help and advice from them.

The present conventional health system does not have answers to many prevailing health conditions and this leaves one with no choice but to take pain killers and repress symptoms, which in turn lead to larger issues over a period of time. On the other hand there are our ancient and evolved disciplines like Yoga, Naturopathy and Ayurveda which offer so many better solutions to the present day lifestyle issues like diabetes, Hypertension, Asthma, etc. Taking this as a starting point, the founders of CureJoy began talking to lot of experts and practitioners in the field and realized that there are some amazing works that are happening in these domains. Places like Stanford and UCLA have dedicated groups and departments to research and further evolve these sciences.

“It felt like our generation has unearthed these old valuable manuscripts and are starting to understand its value. At that point, we felt this is what we want to do. Taking this information and knowledge to the world. ”

The domain of natural health and wellness has been a very fragmented one. Today we see a lot of information on the web about pretty much everything, but credibility is an issue. This issue is amplified when it comes to health. There are people who search for a particular symptom online and after following a huge list of links to their symptoms they end up at some very serious diseases. Curejoy’s approach is to build that layer of credibility and this it achieves via its expert network. They began with certain experiments to see if people do really find something amiss in the current healthcare system and if they are open to natural or alternative means. The experiments gave them deep insights about the existence of such unsatisfied groups of people, resulting in the formation of CureJoy; a content publishing and aggregation platform. Curejoy provides curated content through its back end algorithms and technology on natural health and wellness by experts usually associated with large universities like Stanford or UCLA and merges it with the global trends and patterns. So in essence, CureJoy is a market place matching users looking for Alternative and Natural Health Options to Experts who provide it. Users can access CureJoy both on the internet and through mobile app.

The Benefactors of Cure Joy

Dikshant Dave , Founder, Curejoy

CureJoy was incorporated in October 2013 by serial entrepreneurs Dikshant Dave and Shrinivasa Sharma which is presently headquartered in California, USA with its entire operations and development managed from Bangalore. Dikshant, a computer science graduate from Mumbai University, has been an entrepreneur ever since he started his professional life as he believes in identifying problems and building solutions that can be applied at scale. He oversees the areas of New Products, Corporate Development, Strategy and Growth.

Shrinivasa Sharma has an engineering degree from Manipal and an MBA. He is an eternal Marketer and heads Growth at Curejoy.

Prior to CureJoy, Dikshant had three entrepreneurial ventures to his credit, which he started with his all-time business partner Shrinivasa Sharma from which he eventually made a decent exit. CureJoy was yet another venture that was incorporated in India by Dikshant and his partner after witnessing the present condition of healthcare in the country. A series of experiments to analyze the situation led to the discovery that there were several such people unsatisfied with the current form of conventional healthcare. The deep insights resulted in the introduction of CureJoy, a content publishing and aggregation platform.

They are currently 25 member strong team and in the next few months, the strength of their team would reach 40 plus. With the help of the present team, Dikshant now aims to see CureJoy as the top destination when it comes to healthcare and wellness.

The Health Care Market

Natural health and Wellness market is close to $ 12B in India and about $ 200B globally and growing. In the near future, there may be many new players entering this space. The space that CureJoy operates in, is quite niche in that they have specifically carved out a unique position for themselves. They have taken the non-conventional Health care and Wellness onto the newer social media platforms and built an audience around it. Traditionally this information and communities have existed in small pockets or silos in form of a celebrity Expert websites like Deepak Chopra or Andrew Weil. An unbiased and neutral opinion on the knowledge and expert information has been missing from this domain. There is no single or even top few destinations when it comes to this domain. They are striving to build that layer and become the trusted and credible source when it comes to Natural Health and Wellness.

The Market not only refers to the Health-technology advancements but also to a renewed wave of awareness and interest in Alternative and Natural Health disciplines. Couple this with ubiquitous access to internet and smartphone usage, we are seeing whole new patterns and trends in Healthcare. What started in United States a few years back, has urged a gradual uptake of similar models in India too. There are startups like Practo and Portea making the appointment booking of Health experts as easy as a phone tap. There is also a great rush in the areas around health and fitness services delivered remotely via smartphone. Curejoy provides a personalized information and content around Natural Health, to users via a mobile app, with the ability to reach out to experts.

The CureJoy Campaign

There has been tremendous growth for them over the last one year and they have grown almost 500% in this period. Their is also very vibrant and engaged. “It’s been a great journey and more than anything it has been extremely fulfilling.” They’ve reach out to millions of users every month and their conviction has kept on growing day after day in what they are doing. People are looking towards natural means of living when it comes to their health and they are seeing that trend growing at a very rapid rate.

“We continuously try to beat the startup status quo and go beyond or challenge the norm. We have been fairly successful so far and I am hoping to continue that for future as well.”

Startups are a hard thing. There are multiple factors that can affect your growth or even survival. CureJoy had their own share of ups and downs as well. The initial parts of identifying the End user needs and the gauging the overall market was not easy for them. They had a series of experiments and analysis to navigate through all the noise and clutter to finally arrive at the shape of product they want to offer. While, they did cross that stage, the battle for a startup is a continuous one and that is by design.

When we are talking about something as challenging as a startup, it is only those moments and tokens that make you believe in what you are doing and continue. They’ve had some amazing experiences in their short journey so far. One such story in their very own words is,

“A person from a small town in west Bengal. He sent us a message on facebook about how thankful he was to us for giving him the information about the problem that his 10 year old daughter had been suffering from, for a while. Using one of our Expert’s method / therapy that can be tried at home and without any side effects, he saw a tremendous improvements in her, in just couple of months and he was extremely happy. He had also mentioned that the nearest doctor for him was 120 Kms away.”

Stories like these not only makes you stronger but also humbler in many ways. Stories like these are the rewards that nothing can ever match. So CureJoy continues to march with bigger strides each day.

Today they have more than 3000 Experts on their platform and growing. These Experts are qualified in their domain and they put a significant effort to verify that. So all the information that is published on CureJoy is authored or curated by these experts. With this strong Expert-network powered Information and Content, they have stamped their authority in this domain. They see themselves to be at the center of this ecosystem, where they can work with practically every entity, be it Manufacturers, Experts and Doctors, Health Institutes or Fitness Studios. The Scale that they have achieved so far makes them easily amongst the top 3 online destinations globally, for Natural Health and Wellness.

The Future Expansion

Ever since its inception, CureJoy has grown by almost 100% Q on Q over the last 6 quarters and reached 1 million site visits per month, within six months of its launch, which has now expanded to almost 8 million. The portal also boasts of an active and vibrant Facebook community with about 2.7 Million users that makes it count among the top 3 companies globally, in terms of Facebook engagement. Currently, it prioritizes its impact in India, USA, Australia and English speaking European countries. In the next 6-8 quarters, CureJoy envisions reaching 50 million users including those from countries like Germany, Spain, France, etc with localized content in multiple languages. It targets to emerge as the top destination in Natural Healthcare and Wellness.

Apart from this they are also moving into adjacent verticals such as Food, Beauty, Parenting etc. They have seen a high demand for some of these categories and they think they can best cater to this growing demand by providing a dedicated destination and communities for those categories and mobile remains their key area of focus and growth for the coming quarters.

They have recently announced their $ 1.15 million funding in pre-series A round, led by Accel Partners, India. Serial entrepreneurs Subrata Mitra, Larry Braitman, founder of Flycast & Adify, Venk Krishnan, founder and CEO of NuWare Technologies, and others also participated in the funding.