Accepting 24 hours, conquering the appointment market and moving towards service expansion

Reception 24 is a well-known business in the field of health. This startup was formed in the city of Yazd and continues to use the potential of its birthplace for growth. 40% of the country’s hospitals use the 24-hour reception platform for online appointments, and after the third round of fundraising from Amen Capital, this business seeks to conquer the office market. Accompany Ecomotive’s conversation with Abolfazl Sajdi, CEO and co-founder of Acceptance 24, to learn more about this business.

Where did you start accepting 24?

What we used to do at first was selling software to organizations. The marketing model we used for this was organizational negotiation. During this activity, we cooperated with a hospital and designed a system for them. Like other products, we started marketing the software that was developed and we were able to sell it to several other hospitals. We continued with the same routine for 2 years until we launched a platform in October 2017 that provided the possibility of providing B2C services. In this platform, people could receive appointments online from the organizations we have contracts with.

After launching the platform, how did you manage to attract the audience?

After the launch of the application, people who wanted to use the services of our contracted organizations used our channel. Organizations also invited their audience to use our application to receive appointments.

Do organizations that are parties to the 24-hour acceptance contract work with you exclusively?

Establishing a monopoly means when we require the other party not to cooperate with others. We did not intend to do so and we do not seek to create a monopoly, but since it is not possible to manage the hospital booking program at the same time by several businesses, each hospital must choose to cooperate with one of the providers of this service.

Acceptance 24 is the choice of 40% of hospitals in the country due to its history and quality in its interactions.

What is the condition of the other 60% of hospitals?

Part of this 60% is not considered our market because they cannot use our service due to the environmental conditions of their region. For example, a hospital has so few clients that it does not need a booking service. In another part, the use of digital solutions is still not of interest to the people, and the necessary culture to launch such a service has not yet been created.

A large part of the market is also exclusively at the disposal of the social security organization, which has developed a system for queuing. In order to improve the quality of services provided by social security, we proposed to provide them services for free, but they did not accept them. Another part of the market is available to companies that can be said to be competitors of 24-hour reception.

How is the reception position of 24 compared to competitors?

We have no serious competitors in the services we provide to hospitals. Those who are active, do not have B2C service or if they do, they have very few service providers. However, Acceptance 24 has the largest market share. Social security is in the next position because it is the owner of a part of the service organizations, and we have another competitor that owns 5-15% of the market.

Have you attracted capital during this time?

Yes. So far, we had 3 stages of fundraising. At the beginning of entering the market, because we were not known, even though we launched a service with very good features and managed to capture a good market, the costs prevailed over the revenues. The reason was that in order to compete, we needed to offer a lower price than other actors, and on the other hand, booking was not an issue for which the hospital would pay a high price. In this situation, in order to be able to cover the expenses related to human resources and to move forward, we attracted capital. This investment was made by Yazd Research and Technology Fund.

In the second stage, we sought to acquire a larger share of the hospital market, and as I mentioned, we have managed to acquire 40% of this market so far. We believe that due to the existing monopolies in the market, we will eventually be able to take over 50% of the market. We attracted the necessary capital for this stage from the Covenant Economic Group.

In the third stage, capital acquisition was formed with the aim of entering the office sector, and we attracted the necessary capital for this issue from Amen Investment Company (Amen Capital).

How was the selection of investors done at each stage?

The first fundraising of Acceptance 24 took place in 1994. At that time, there was still no startup ecosystem in Yazd, and there was only one active investor organization that was able to provide capital for one or two businesses.

In the next stages, more calculated capital acquisition was done. There were more options available and we did a lot of research to identify the best options and enter into negotiations with them. In the second stage, we were faced with 6 options and in the third stage with 10 options.

In addition to capital, what value was offered by investors to Acceptance 24?

Amen Capital has a wide network and connections in the field of health, as well as an entrepreneurial ecosystem, which has increased our access level in these environments. On the other hand, investors did not have such an advantage, although we did not announce such a need either, because at that time our business was in the initial stages of growth.

How will the 24-hour reception service be developed?

We currently offer online appointment and consultation services. Other services such as diet service have also been launched and we are planning to launch a few more services. Currently, we are looking to create a network effect between users, and we are trying so that in the next step, users will receive added value other than online appointment and consultation services. In this framework, the exchange and sharing of information between users helps to improve their health.

What challenges do you face in setting up services?

According to the search trend and the requests of the users of Acceptance 24, we decided to create 4 services including: diet, mental health, health at home, and police market for health equipment and services. Except for the regime department, which is already launched, the rest have not been launched so that we can stabilize and strengthen the current departments.

The government also throws many stones at the health sector, but this issue is not our concern and it can be resolved. Of course, these strictures are due to the importance of the health sector, because this sector is related to people’s lives. In my opinion, colleagues in the health ecosystem should understand the reason for these governance strictures; Although sometimes the government does not understand the ecosystem, for example, the issue of drug delivery is an applicable issue, but it is probably not implemented due to the existence of the mafia in this area.

Have you met a person or group that changed the course of your business?

At first, acceptance of 24, like many collections in this area, entered the office department and failed, and almost all the capital of the first stage was thrown away. This failure was due to the non-cooperation of doctors with us. After this experience, I communicated with one of my friends, Mr. Kochzadeh, who was the manager of a hospital in Yazd, about the appointment system. He gave me the opportunity to stay in his hospital for 6 months and test the appointment system. In fact, with their cooperation, our system changed its direction towards providing services to the hospital, and if this support did not take place, we would not have reached this stage of growth. He also helped us a lot in attracting capital for the second phase of accepting 24.

What do you consider the reason for the growth and success of Acceptance 24?

I represent a team of 4 people. We have been working together since the beginning. We started working together about 11 years ago in 1986 and we all had some expertise in information technology. Mr. Qane and Bande were the main founders of the team when we met in university and both of us added one of our friends to the team. The 4 of us have a very deep brotherly relationship. I think the investors also agreed to cooperate because of the good relationship and cooperation of this 4-person team. I work in the field of strategic management, one person works in the field of commerce and finance, one person works in the field of technical affairs, and one person works in the field of marketing. From the beginning, we planned so that each person has one of these specialties so that we don’t need another person in key matters.

We took many risks together. Previously, we started about 10 companies, 8 companies went bankrupt and we closed 2 companies ourselves, and we are still involved in paying the debts of the previous businesses. Based on the good team experience I have had, I believe that first of all, a good team is very effective.

Another issue is the family; In my opinion, if you are married, you cannot separate your business from your family; Because there is no business that reaches this level and its people work less than 12 hours a day. All 4 members of our team work 12, 13 hours a day and even during a period of time we were constantly traveling and were not present in Yazd. Currently, we only spend 2 to 3 days at home in a week, and we spend 3 to 4 hours a day with our family; On the other hand, due to the debts I mentioned, we pay 100 million monthly installments. Therefore, the support we had from the family side was very deep and I can confidently say that all four of our families were members of the team.

Another feature of our team is that we are not from Tehran and this was an advantage for us because if this business is located in Yazd and human resources are provided; It will be manageable with half the cost of Tehran. For example, at the moment, our completely similar competitor manages his business in Tehran with twice the cost, and the difference in the amount of costs is very different in Shahrestan and Tehran. Accordingly, if people can grow their business in their city, they will benefit more.