Chikitsa
चिकित्साDoctors & health
₹50 to talk. The rest only if they need to see you.
A consultation costs about ₹200. Getting to the clinic costs a morning: the shared jeep, the wait, the walk back, a day's wage foregone, and somebody to come along if the patient is old. For a rash, a cough, a repeat prescription or “is this serious?”, the ₹200 was never the expensive part.
How it works
Start to doorstep
- 1
Say what is wrong, in your own words
The complaint is the single most useful thing in the record and the first thing the doctor reads. Most consultations are held by somebody for somebody else — a daughter-in-law holding the phone, the patient beside her — so the record carries both.
- 2
Pay ₹50 and talk
A video call with a real, registered doctor who sits at the block market you already go to. A thread opens the moment you pay, so a patient who has paid always has somewhere to write even before the doctor answers.
- 3
The doctor decides, in one tap
Advice only, come and be looked at, tests, refer onward, or go now. Said plainly, including when it is beyond what a block market can do — so nobody is sent on a round trip for nothing.
- 4
If you have to go, it is arranged together
A slot in their consulting session, the balance of the fee, and a vehicle to the door and back. One consultation credits one visit, so the ₹50 is a part payment rather than a discount code.
What is different
The part we got wrong first
- Pick by what is wrong, not by a speciality list
- A video call in the app with a registered doctor at your own block market
- The registration number is checked against the council's register by a person
- What the doctor writes is called advice, not a prescription, because that is what it is
How we know
The doctor is paid either way, and that is the only reason they will answer the first call. The total is the doctor's own fee and the split is ours — ₹50 buys the conversation now, and the balance buys the visit only if the doctor says they have to look at the patient. If it turns out to be nothing, the household paid a quarter of the fee and kept the morning.
For the doctor
The other side of the transaction
A marketplace that only works for the buyer is a subsidy with a logo. Every service was designed from the seller's constraints first — what they can realistically promise, and what they must not be asked to change.
- ✓Paid for the first conversation, whether or not it becomes a visit
- ✓Their own fee, split the way they choose between talking and seeing
- ✓Patients from villages that would never have reached their clinic
- ✓A registration checked once, by a person, against the council register
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