Bengaluru-based healthtech startup Practo is rapidly expanding in the UAE, using the country as a springboard to refine and scale its full-stack care platform, which it is now taking global, co-founder Siddhartha Nihalani told EnterpriseAM.

What is Practo? It is a digital platform that connects patients with doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, and diagnostic labs to book appointments, online consultations, and secondary services. Leveraging its experience in India and the Gulf, the firm launched operations in the US last month.

Existing base: Practo has operated in the UAE for over a year and has offered its Insta clinic management software services in the emirates and Saudi Arabia. The UAE rollout demonstrates the firm’s ability to thrive in mature, ins. led economies, said Nihalani.

The company has localized its platform by integrating ins. led models that dominate Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Nihalani said. The UAE is now a sustained focus market where the firm expects to continue investing in product innovation rather than treating it as a short-term experiment. In markets like Dubai, ins. strongly shapes how patients access care, making visibility into coverage a critical input for decision-making.

Practo preferred its first overseas launch in the UAE over Europe or Southeast Asia to tap into the country’s high-density urban population and its mature private healthcare infrastructure, Nihalani said. Ins. penetration and digitally fluent users made the market a natural extension of Practo’s consumer journey.

An attractive consumer market: Long-standing links between India and the UAE, through the Indian diaspora, Indian doctors, and established medical travel patterns, also shaped Practo’s market entry. The diversity of medical providers and a patient base that actively seeks clarity when navigating healthcare decisions were also deciding factors.

The firm expects to reach roughly 10% of Dubai’s population in annual usage, Nihalani said. Early consumer traction suggests the platform has found relevance. More than 31k doctors across some 3k healthcare facilities are currently discoverable on Practo in the UAE, with over 50k monthly active users.

The near-term priority is not aggressive geographic expansion but stronger engagement within the UAE, particularly across high-frequency outpatient categories such as dentistry, dermatology, general practice, gynecology, ENT, physiotherapy, and mental health.

The UAE experience has influenced how Practo approaches global rollouts. Learning from ins. visibility has sharpened Practo’s approach to compliance, partnerships, and user decision-making in developed markets, but Nihalani cautioned against drawing a direct parallel between global markets and the US. “The US strategy is shaped by 17 years of operating across diverse healthcare systems to build a new category spanning discovery, access, feedback, and care navigation at scale.”

Category adoption varies by market: In the US, early traction has been strongest in dental and mental health, whereas in the UAE, outpatient specialties dominate early usage, and in India, secondary care discovery is more mature, Nihilani told us. Over time, Practo expects these patterns to converge, with the platform serving as a single entry point for complex care journeys.

Practo remains open to strategic acquisitions and partnerships across the US and the Middle East, and it is also exploring collaborations with hospital groups and insurers to formalize care pathways. In healthcare, Nihalani argued, “partnerships can be as powerful as acquisitions in improving how patients move through the system.”

What’s next for Practo: Practo is reportedly preparing for a potential listing in 2H 2026, according to Bloomberg. However, Nihalani refrained from commenting on its listing plans.

(** Tap or click the headline above to read this story with all of the links to our background and outside sources.)

Tags: