Pulse

Overview

Pulse was the last form of DocTalk, a YC-backed Indian health-tech company founded in 2016. The first product let patients keep records and pay to message doctors they already knew. After raising $5 million, the company expanded across three cities, hired toward hospital sales, and eventually spun its electronic-record work into Pulse India.^[5]

The company found a real clinical problem but attached it to two fragile behaviors: patients had to pay for follow-up messages, and doctors had to move work out of calls and WhatsApp into a new system. Venture funding financed geographic and organizational expansion before either behavior was proven durable. The late EMR pivot put the product closer to the clinic workflow, but it arrived after nearly 100 layoffs and a failed financing process.^[6]

TechCircle reported that the health-tech operation shut in 2019 and returned remaining capital to investors.^[7]

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Founding Story

Krishna Chaitanya “Chaitu” Aluru grew up around medicine because his father was a cardiologist in Hyderabad. YourStory reported that the elder Aluru received patient calls and messages around the clock, many of them routine follow-ups. Chaitu saw the same files, prescriptions, and questions moving through calls, email, and WhatsApp with no organized record.^[4]

Chaitu started DocTalk in February 2016 with Akshat Goenka and Vamsee Chamakura. The three had previously worked on an AI assistant called Genie. Chaitu and Vamsee had known each other since middle school; Vamsee studied computer science at IIIT Hyderabad, Chaitu at Brown, and Akshat graduated from Wharton after working in investment banking.^[3]

Their first idea was an on-demand marketplace for meeting a new doctor. Interviews changed the thesis. Chronic-care patients were reluctant to replace a trusted physician, while both sides struggled after the initial visit. Akshat wrote that “fear of unfamiliarity trumps frustration of impatience every single time when it comes to health.”^[2] DocTalk became the follow-up layer for an existing relationship.

Akshat told YourStory: “We do not connect patients with new doctors, we just streamline the process post-consultation.” Patients could save reports, subscribe to a participating doctor, share files, and receive prescriptions. Doctors gained one queue for patient context and paid follow-up work.^[4]

The team entered YC Fellowship and then Winter 2017. Chaitu described the ambition plainly: “We want to change how healthcare works in India.”^[3] YC now lists Pulse as inactive and records a team size of 30, though contemporaneous layoff reporting shows the organization briefly grew much larger.^[1]

Timeline

• February 2016: Aluru, Goenka, and Chamakura start DocTalk around post-visit communication with an existing doctor.^[4]
• Summer 2016: The company joins YC Fellowship after rejecting a new-doctor marketplace model.^[2]
• Winter 2017: DocTalk joins YC W17; by May, Chaitu reports more than 5,000 users.^[3]
• November 2017: Khosla Ventures and Matrix Partners India lead a $5 million round. DocTalk claims 500 doctors and 30,000 patients in Delhi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad.^[5]
• April 2018: A Hacker News post recruits mobile and full-stack engineers in Hyderabad.^[9]
• November 2018: Goenka resigns, nearly 100 employees are laid off, and a proposed $10 million raise fails. The company turns toward EMR software.^[6]
• June 2019: TechCircle reports that Pulse India's EMR transition failed to accelerate, the health-tech business shut, and remaining capital was returned.^[7]

What They Built

DocTalk began as a paired set of patient and doctor applications. A patient uploaded reports, prescriptions, vital signs, and medication information, then connected to a doctor seen in person. The doctor could review that history, answer messages, issue a prescription, and track progress without another clinic appointment. The product verified the existing patient relationship and had no directory of unfamiliar doctors.