Zaynax Health: Delivering affordable healthcare access

Shamsunnahar was pleasantly surprised to find a doctor receiving her call when she phoned Zaynax Health's telemedicine service.

"Usually, call centres receive phone calls and connect to a doctor. But here, the doctor directly received my call and gave me the necessary advice for my ulcer issues," Shamsunnahar told The Business Standard.  

As a busy professional, the convenience of a telephone consultation was a welcome relief, sparing her from the time-consuming process of visiting a doctor in person.

Shamsunnahar avails all these services by paying only Tk79 for a  package of Zaynax Health. "With this, I get telemedicine services as often as I want in a month."

Zaynax Health, starting its journey in February last year, is "the country's first health super app providing 360-degree digital solutions for all healthcare needs", the company said.

Their packages include 24/7 telemedicine services with both audio and video calls, online consultation with specialist doctors, discounted lab tests, medicine delivery, hospitalisation cashback of up to Tk2,00,000, and more.

Zaynax Health on average provides online telemedicine services to 700-800 patients a day, 60% of whom are from outside Dhaka, the company said. This helps patients outside Dhaka get consultations with real doctors instead of quacks.

Besides, since its inception in February 2022, more than 1,20,000 people have taken Zaynax's services.

Zaynax also offers 'Doctor Calling Cards' to prevent self-treatment without prescriptions. These scratch cards provide two tele-consultations with doctors, offering both audio and video options for Tk49.

The company believes this facility will reduce the use of wrong treatments or the unnecessary usage of antibiotics.

Parvez Ahmad, chief operating officer of Zaynax Health, told TBS that they were working on accessibility and affordability of healthcare. 

"There is one doctor for every 10,000 patients in Bangladesh. The number of doctors cannot be increased overnight but we can make maximum utilisation of the doctors we have now by using technology," he said.

How to use Zaynax Health app

After downloading the Zaynax Health app from the Google Play Store, any package can be purchased using bKash, cash or Visa card. 

There are eight services including doctor calls, health checkups, diagnostics, and medicine orders. 

Parvez Ahmad said, "Patients reach out to us for a wide range of medical concerns, reflecting the GP (general practitioner) approach. This concept is not widely practised in Bangladesh, but we aim to introduce and provide it here."

He said Bangladeshis seek out professors or senior physicians for all health issues, which can lead to other emergency patients, who genuinely require immediate attention, being denied services.

He mentioned that Zaynax has the largest partnership in Bangladesh. "We have partnerships with 356 hospitals and a presence in 64 districts. Buy our package and get a 20%-50% discount on any test at any hospital."

Zaynax Health currently has 82,000 paid customers who qualify for cashback on hospitalisation expenses ranging from Tk50,000 to Tk2,00,000 with the purchase of their package.

Purchase a Zaynax package before hospital admission for a refund based on the package, with the submission of the money receipt and treatment sheet, he added.

Parvez Ahmad said, "We provide services to garment workers. So far 45,000 workers are using our package. We will serve 6.7 million workers in two years."

Zaynax Health also plans to provide free doctor services in the Bengali language to expatriate workers.