Sometimes restlessness can be a good thing. Aditya Oza had launched Motorad five years ago, and after sweating on things big and small, the company was sailing smoothly on the waters of success. But that seemed not enough for Aditya. He began itching for something more to do, which led to the founding of CureMeAbroad in September 2025, a company based in Pune.
Aditya says, “Mikhail’s (his co-founder and cousin) sister was married and living in Canada. When she got pregnant, she developed a terrible pain in her neck. Unfortunately, the medical system there gave her an appointment three months later. Which was simply too far away.”
The long and short of it was they brought his cousin to India and got her treated and within weeks she was fit and fine. It would have been all forgotten by most people, but to Aditya, it was a problem that people living in the West were facing. He dug deeper and saw that the problem faced by his cousin was very common, and many people in foreign countries faced a similar situation.
Aditya further adds, “The numbers were staggering. Every year, 14 million people travel abroad for medical treatment and on average spend $8 to10,000 on such treatment. How would they find the doctor and hospital for their medical needs? Well, often via agents or Google search. Brokers route patients to hospitals that pay the highest referral fee — not necessarily the best clinical fit. There is no pricing transparency. There is no independent comparison. And patients in Western markets face a brutal choice: wait 12–18 months on a public list, pay unaffordable private costs at home, or figure out international healthcare completely on their own. Patients still rely on Google searches, Facebook groups, and unverified brokers to make some of the most important decisions of their lives.”
Getting Down to Work
Once they identified the opportunity, Oza and Bora stepped away from their roles at E-Motorad—with the support of their investors—to focus on their new venture.
Their first step was research. “We found clear patterns. Americans prefer Mexico, Europeans go to Turkey, and Australians often choose Thailand. Many procedures are elective, cosmetic surgeries like tummy tucks and facelifts, along with joint replacements,” Oza says.
The idea was simple yet ambitious: create a platform for medical travel that functions like a booking app, but with trust and transparency at its core. They began by identifying what matters most to patients—hospital infrastructure, doctor expertise, and global accreditations such as those from the Joint Commission International (JCI).
They then analysed hospitals across India, Thailand, Turkey, and Mexico, followed by deep research into doctors, including AI-driven sentiment analysis of patient reviews. The result was CureMeAbroad—an app designed to feel like “a knowledgeable medical friend,” says Oza.
“Someone who gives honest advice without trying to sell.”
The platform allows users to compare verified hospitals and surgeons across multiple countries, access transparent pricing with no hidden mark-ups, and interact with an AI care assistant available 24/7. It also enables them to explore detailed guides on procedures and destinations while receiving end-to-end support for both travel and treatment.
For hospitals, it opens access to international patients—especially those they would otherwise struggle to reach due to time zone differences and limited outreach.
Will It Work?
Oza believes the timing couldn’t be better. “Healthcare inflation in Western markets isn’t slowing down. Waiting lists remain long. Demand for high-quality, affordable treatment abroad is only growing,” he says. India, he adds, is well-positioned to benefit, offering world-class care at a fraction of Western costs. Government initiatives like Heal in India further strengthen the ecosystem.
“Our core differentiator is trust,” Oza explains. “We’re not a sales-driven platform. We’re designed to reduce patient anxiety, not exploit it.”
The Litmus Test
For any start-up is the market place. Will sales happen? Are all your assumptions and studies in tune with market needs? Aditya remembers the very first client they had.
Oza says, “Mikhail and I were doing everything by ourselves, and there was this couple from Australia that had selected a hospital in Thailand for their body shaping surgery. After a few conversations, they could figure out that we had no real experience in the business. However, we told them the truth – you are our first client, and we will do all we can to get you the best fit for your needs. I think truth sold our service. They believed us and signed us on.”
According to CureMeAbroad, the No 1 destination for medical tourism is Mexico. Followed by Thailand, Turkey, India and Georgia. Says Aditya, “We present them with all options. If they are looking for a budget travel with a rhinoplasty or want a vacation and special food needs, and so on.”
Early on, Aditya realised that in this business, it is the doctor who does the selling. “After the initial papers are exchanged, it is the surgeon who will take the call. And almost all of them are extremely busy doing surgeries. And because of this, it can take three to four weeks to get a consultation with a doctor. And patients will shop with five to six hospitals and doctors. This means that, depending on human capital, it can take you only so far.”
So the duo worked on a tool that could calculate the cost of treatment at a particular hospital once they had “the patients’ BMI and their medical history. We can, with the help of AI, give you a cost estimate in two hours! And as of now, our estimate error is plus or minus $50/. In addition to this tech assistance, they also have doctors on their payroll in different countries who will understand your problem and recommend the best line of treatment. These doctors, after assessing the need, will run the patient through a 3-D video that will educate them on what a knee replacement transplant will be like, the different types of materials available and so on. Currently, they employ 35 people.
The Money Story
CureMeAbroad has been bootstrapped so far, with Oza and Bora investing ₹3 crore of their own funds. The company is now in the process of raising external capital. It has generated $500,000 in revenue this quarter, with an annualised run rate of $2.4 million.
“The market today is fragmented,” says Oza. “You have brokers chasing commissions, static directories with no support, and high-end concierge services that don’t scale.”
CureMeAbroad positions itself as a hybrid, combining discovery, trust, and support in a single platform. Notably, its messaging avoids aggressive sales tactics. “We say ‘Explore Options’ and ‘Compare Hospitals’—never ‘Book Now’,” he notes.
The future:
“We want to add as much more to our offering as we can to make it very easy for our clients. Often, they have issues in foreign countries about where to stay, how to get the particular type of food they want and so on. We are working on that too.
“We want to expand our verified listings to 500+ hospitals across 6 countries, launch a mobile app for native discovery and patient support, build out a dedicated oncology vertical with global hospital rankings, scale into non-English markets: DACH region, GCC, and Francophone Africa and introduce a patient financing product for treatment accessibility.”
Quite a tall order, but when restlessness gnaws at the tail, it can do a lot, as E-Motorad showed.
