Breaking Barriers In Rural Healthcare: How Smriti Tandon Is Revolutionizing Medical Access Through Online Chikitsa Mitra

Smriti Tandon is reshaping India’s rural healthcare landscape, one digital consultation at a time. As co-founder of Online Chikitsa Mitra, this Liverpool University graduate has transformed her decade-long experience in the automobile industry into a mission-driven healthcare revolution. After spending years managing one of Uttar Pradesh’s largest Maruti Suzuki dealerships, Smriti witnessed firsthand how her employees struggled to access quality healthcare for their families in rural areas—often choosing between lost wages and basic medical care.

In 2022, she joined forces with her brother Shubhang to scale Online Chikitsa Mitra, a health-tech startup that has already facilitated over 120,000 virtual consultations across 15+ states. With an ambitious vision to establish 1 lakh e-clinics nationwide, Smriti is not just building a business—she’s democratizing healthcare access for India’s underserved rural communities.

In an exclusive interview with Entrepreneur Loop, Smriti shares her remarkable journey from automobiles to healthcare, the operational challenges of scaling telemedicine in rural India, and how she’s empowering women to break societal barriers in accessing medical care.

 

1.) Could you please introduce yourself to our Entrepreneur Loop readers and tell us about your journey from working in the automobile industry with Maruti Suzuki to co-founding India’s leading rural health-tech startup, Online Chikitsa Mitra?

I spent over a decade running one of Uttar Pradesh’s biggest Maruti Suzuki dealerships, managing sales, service and expansion. That experience gave me a strong foundation in scaling operations and leading teams, but it also exposed me to a deeper challenge healthcare. Many times, I saw employees request salary advances, not just for themselves but also for their families back in their villages, simply to consult private doctors. Visiting ESIC facilities often meant long queues, rushed consultations, and hours of travel. For them, accessing timely treatment was both stressful and financially draining.

When my brother Shubhang piloted Online Chikitsa Mitra (OCM) in 2017, I immediately recognised its transformative potential. I joined him in 2022 making the shift from cars to care. In many ways, both journeys connect: mobility changed aspirations, but healthcare changes lives. Today, through OCM, our mission is clear, to ensure that no family in rural India has to choose between lost wages and basic healthcare.

2.) How did your decade-long experience in the automobile industry at Maruti Suzuki prepare you for the challenges of building a health-tech startup? What transferable skills proved most valuable? 

Building OCM came with its share of challenges – earning the trust of rural patients, ensuring we weren’t seen as outsiders but as part of the existing healthcare ecosystem, managing operations across scattered geographies, and creating an affordable yet sustainable model in a price-sensitive market. My decade in the automobile industry gave me the tools to tackle each of these. Running a large dealership taught me how to build trust at scale in communities where credibility takes time, how to manage complex operations with multiple moving parts, and how to sustain revenue models in highly competitive environments.
In healthcare, trust is everything and the customer-first culture I honed in automobiles shaped OCM’s patient-first approach. The operational discipline of training large teams and ensuring consistent service delivery now helps us manage 550+ e-clinics. Most importantly, I’ve focused on building an environment where our team believes in the vision as true co-owners because lasting impact can only be achieved when everyone pulls together with the same purpose.

3.) Online Chikitsa Mitra has facilitated over 120,000 virtual consultations across 15+ states. What have been the biggest operational challenges in scaling this model, and how did you overcome them?

Our biggest challenge has been cultural – convincing rural patients to trust telemedicine over physical consultations. For many, healthcare meant a face-to-face doctor visit, and the idea of video consultations felt unfamiliar and risky. We overcame this by partnering with local medical store owners, the first point of contact for most families in times of illness. Their endorsement built immediate credibility and assured patients that this was a safe, reliable option.
Digital illiteracy was another hurdle. Many patients were not comfortable with apps or smartphones, so we kept the platform simple and human-led. Store owners assist in taking vitals, entering details and connecting patients with doctors, ensuring no one is left behind due to technology barriers.

 

By blending trust with technology, we’ve delivered 120,000+ consultations across 15 states. What began as hesitation is now growing confidence, with 55% patients returning for care, proof that rural India is ready for digital healthcare.

4.) As a woman entrepreneur in the health-tech space, what specific barriers have you encountered, and how are you working to empower women’s access to healthcare through your platform?

As a woman entrepreneur in health-tech, barriers often appear in subtle forms: others’ perceptions about credibility or the need to constantly prove oneself in a male-dominated space. I chose early on not to dwell on these, but to channel them into strength. My lived experience as a woman gave me a deep understanding of why rural women are often last in line for healthcare, whether due to financial dependence, cultural taboos or needing a male companion to seek care.

Through OCM, we’ve worked to change this narrative. Today, over 56% of our patients are women, a powerful shift. By creating safe spaces in e-Clinics, organising dedicated women’s health camps both online and offline, and raising awareness on issues like anaemia, menstrual health, and NCDs, we are empowering women to seek care independently. For me, it’s not just about breaking barriers in entrepreneurship; it’s about breaking barriers in healthcare access for millions of women.

5.) Your E-clinic model strategically partners with local medical stores and trains store owners to facilitate teleconsultations. How do you ensure quality control and maintain medical standards across these distributed touchpoints?

We ensure quality through three layers: technology, training, and monitoring. Every medical store partner undergoes structured training to record vitals and use our platform accurately, while our Patient Relief Team follows up with patients to track prescription adherence and gather feedback, closing the loop on care quality. To strengthen this further, we recently launched the 120/80 doctors’ app, which streamlines onboarding of verified MBBS/MD professionals, gives them greater autonomy in managing consultations and ensures patients in underserved areas can access a wider pool of specialists.
Together, this integrated model maintains consistent medical standards across our e-clinics while expanding both reach and reliability.

6.) With ambitious plans to establish over 1 lakh e-clinics across India, what is your fundraising strategy and what kind of investors are you targeting to fuel this massive expansion?

Our expansion goal of 1 lakh e-clinics requires partners who value both scale and social impact. We are seeking patient capital and impact-focused investors aligned with SDG 3 (Health & Well-being). Our model is asset-light, profitable at the unit level and designed for scale, making it attractive for both social impact funds and healthcare-focused VCs. In addition to capital, we are actively exploring strategic partnerships with healthcare providers, diagnostic companies, pharma, and insurers players who can strengthen the ecosystem while amplifying our reach. This blend of financial and strategic support ensures that OCM not only grows faster but also embeds itself deeper into India’s healthcare landscape.

7.) Can you share some success stories or case studies that demonstrate the real impact Online Chikitsa Mitra has made in transforming lives in rural communities?

Radha, 37, a school teacher from Kiloli village in Raebareli, had been struggling with constant headaches and fatigue after recovering from COVID-19. Like many rural women, she dismissed the symptoms as part of her daily workload and never sought medical advice. One day, she visited her nearby medical store, now an OCM e-clinic and connected with a doctor through our platform. The doctor advised her to monitor her blood pressure for a week. The results revealed uncontrolled hypertension, a serious condition she didn’t even know she had.

That single consultation changed Radha’s health journey. With timely diagnosis, regular follow-ups, and continuous support from both her doctor and the Patient Relief Team, she now manages her blood pressure with confidence. Today, Radha is a regular OCM patient. Her story reflects a larger truth: millions of rural women live with undiagnosed lifestyle diseases. Through OCM’s model, these “invisible patients” are finally being seen, diagnosed, and treated close to home.

8.) Given your diverse interests including your Le Cordon Bleu pâtisserie diploma, how do you maintain work-life balance while scaling a demanding startup, and what advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?

Balance, for me, comes from clarity of purpose. Entrepreneurship is not about chasing hours but about creating impact. At the same time, I consciously make space to nurture my passion for baking. I hold a Le Cordon Bleu pâtisserie diploma and recently travelled to Spain to study vegan pastry technology. These creative pursuits outside of work help me stay grounded and bring a fresh perspective back into my professional life.

My advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is simple: embrace patience, build teams that believe in your mission and don’t fear failure; it’s part of the process. Most importantly, stay close to the problem you’re solving. That connection will anchor you in tough times and remind you why you started. As I often say, “Passion gives you energy, but purpose gives you direction.”

9.) Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, what is your long-term vision for Online Chikitsa Mitra, and how do you see it contributing to India’s overall healthcare transformation?

Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, our vision for Online Chikitsa Mitra (OCM) is to make healthcare a right, not a privilege, for rural India.  We aim to expand our e-clinic network across the country, while simultaneously scaling our patient app to reach households in regions where even medical stores don’t exist. We see OCM becoming the primary digital health access point for India’s 900M+ rural population.

Our focus will be on chronic and preventive care, using technology for early detection of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and hypertension. With the integration of ABHA-linked health records, IoT diagnostic tools, and AI-enabled triage, we will strengthen continuity of care and align with the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission. Beyond technology, we remain committed to building trust at the community level by empowering medical store owners and health workers as facilitators. By combining community touchpoints with scalable digital innovation, OCM will contribute directly to India’s healthcare transformation bringing access, affordability and equity to the very last mile.