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Founder Interview

How HBox Hit $1.4M ARR in 12 Months with a Medicare Reimbursement Model (Interview with CEO Banu Dhanakoti)

Interview Date
August 17, 2022
Interviewee
Banu DhanakotiFounder and CEO
Watch
Watch the full interview

Company Metrics at Interview Time

ARR (2022)

$1.4M

Physicians on Platform (2022)

100

Devices in the Field (2022)

1,800

Total Funding Raised

$1.55M

Monthly Cash Burn (2022)

$30K

Historical Snapshot

These numbers were reported by Banu Dhanakoti during the interview recorded in August 2022 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See HBox’s current numbers.

Key Takeaways

  • 01HBox reached $1.4M ARR in August 2022, up from $100K a year earlier when the company had just three clinic customers.
  • 02The company serves 100 physicians across eight US states, all acquired through referrals with no dedicated sales team.
  • 031,800 HBox smart kits are currently deployed in patients' homes, generating $60 to $79 per patient per month in subscription revenue.
  • 04Medicare reimburses physicians $140 to $200 per patient per month for remote monitoring services, making HBox net positive for clinics.
  • 05HBox raised $750K on a $5M SAFE cap in August 2021 and $800K on a $30M SAFE cap in August 2022, totaling $1.55M raised.
  • 06The team is 30 people total, with 9 engineers based in India and clinical care coaches based in the US.
  • 07Monthly revenue run rate reached approximately $120K per month in August 2022, up from roughly $5K to $10K per month a year prior.
  • 08HBox processes $300K to $350K in Medicare claims per month to generate its $120K monthly revenue.
  • 09The company is burning $30K per month and was considering debt financing of $1M to $1.5M to fund hardware inventory growth.
  • 10The company has not lost a single customer since its first commercial clinic launch in April 2021.

Company Metrics at Time of Interview

MetricValueSource
ARR (2022)$1.4MFounder interview, Aug 2022
ARR (prior year) (2021)$100KFounder interview, Aug 2022
Monthly Revenue Run Rate (2022)$120KFounder interview, Aug 2022
Physicians on Platform (2022)100Founder interview, Aug 2022
Devices Deployed (2022)1,800Founder interview, Aug 2022
Price per Patient per Month (2022)$60 to $79Founder interview, Aug 2022
Medicare Reimbursement per Patient per Month (2022)$140 to $200Founder interview, Aug 2022
Monthly Medicare Claims Processed (2022)$300K to $350KFounder interview, Aug 2022
Hardware Cost Landed per Unit (2022)$200Founder interview, Aug 2022
Hardware Minimum Order Commitment (2022)3,000 unitsFounder interview, Aug 2022
SAFE Round 1 Raised (2021)$750KFounder interview, Aug 2022
SAFE Round 1 Valuation Cap (2021)$5MFounder interview, Aug 2022
SAFE Round 2 Raised (2022)$800KFounder interview, Aug 2022
SAFE Round 2 Valuation Cap (2022)$30MFounder interview, Aug 2022
Total Funding Raised$1.55MFounder interview, Aug 2022
Monthly Cash Burn (2022)$30KFounder interview, Aug 2022
Team Size (2022)30Founder interview, Aug 2022
Engineers (2022)9Founder interview, Aug 2022
Patients Addressable via Installed Clinics (2022)180,000Founder interview, Aug 2022
Patients Added per Month (2022)300Founder interview, Aug 2022

Growth Breakdown

Revenue

HBox reached $1.4M ARR in August 2022, equivalent to roughly $120K per month, up from $100K in total ARR just one year earlier when the company had its first commercial clinic launch in April 2021. The subscription model charges physicians $60 to $79 per patient per month for each smart kit deployed in a patient's home.

Customers

The platform serves 100 physicians across eight US states as of August 2022, with 1,800 smart kits deployed in patients' homes. All 100 physicians were acquired through referrals from the initial three clinic customers, with no dedicated sales team in place.

Team

HBox has 30 full-time team members as of August 2022, including 9 engineers based in India handling R&D and clinical care coaches and customer success staff based in the US.

Funding and Profitability

The company raised $750K on a $5M SAFE cap in August 2021 and $800K on a $30M SAFE cap in August 2022, totaling $1.55M raised. HBox is burning approximately $30K per month, driven primarily by upfront hardware investment, and was evaluating whether to raise additional equity or $1M to $1.5M in debt financing to fund hardware inventory as patient volume scales.

Growth Strategy

Referral-Driven Physician Acquisition

Every one of HBox's 100 physicians was acquired through referrals from existing customers, starting with three clinics sourced through the founder's personal network. The Medicare reimbursement model makes HBox net positive for physicians, which Banu Dhanakoti credited as the primary driver of strong word-of-mouth referrals.

Medicare Reimbursement as a Sales Enabler

Medicare reimburses physicians $140 to $200 per patient per month for remote chronic condition monitoring, while HBox charges $60 to $79 per patient per month. This built-in margin for the physician removes the typical budget objection and accelerates adoption without a traditional sales motion.

Compounding Patient Enrollment Within Clinics

Once a clinic joins the platform, patient enrollment grows organically each month as physicians prescribe the kit to new patients visiting the clinic. Banu Dhanakoti described this as an engine that gets kick-started, with early clinics growing from 20 patients in their first month to 200 to 300 patients over nine months.

Integrated Hardware and Subscription Model

Rather than selling hardware separately, HBox bundles the smart kit into a per-patient monthly subscription, removing the upfront cost barrier for clinics and creating a predictable twelve-month recurring revenue stream backed by Medicare reimbursement cycles.

End-to-End Claims Processing

HBox handles the full Medicare claims and reimbursement workflow on behalf of physicians, processing $300K to $350K in claims per month to generate its own $120K monthly revenue. This service layer deepens the relationship with clinics and reduces churn by making HBox operationally embedded in the physician's billing process.

Best Quotes

So we are we are an end to end platform and services company, and we serve clinics across eight states in US where we not only provide the hardware and software technology, but we also provide end to end care delivery services like clinical care coaches with billing infrastructure and so on.
So we don't the hardware is not sold as hardware. It's an integrated subscription model. So we lease those hardware to the patients. So our revenue is all subscription revenue. So we don't sell the hardware as a separate.
So we don't let me give you walk you through our business model. Right? We don't lease hardware separately. What we do is we charge per patient on a per month basis anywhere between depending on the volume of the clinic, anywhere between 60 to $79 per patient per month.
And the reason why you would do as a physician is because Medicare reimburses for these services. So Medicare reimburses anywhere between 140 to $200 per patient per month for you as a physician, and we help that process as well. We make the claims. We get the reimbursement for you as a physician.
So we today on our platform, we have close to 100 providers, what we call physicians, and we are generating our ARR right now is 1,400,000.
So totally, it's around 1,800 right now.
That was a safe note. So the valuation cap was 5,000,000, and this year, it is 30,000,000.
It was around 100 k. We just started. So the company the first commercial launch with a clinic was happened last year, April.
We are burning close to not much. It's around 30 k.

What Happened Next

This interview captured HBox at an early but fast-moving stage in August 2022, when the company had just completed its first full year of commercial operations and was debating its next capital raise. The numbers here reflect what Banu Dhanakoti reported at that point in time and are not current. Visit the HBox company profile on GetLatka for the latest available data on revenue, customers, and funding.

View HBox’s current profile and metrics

Full Transcript

Introduction and Founder500 Event Announcement

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey guys, recording this here on what is it? Friday the nineteenth. Maybe you're seeing this on Monday at the latest, but wanna let you know we are almost sold out for Foundercomp Sorry, Founder500 in Austin, Texas here in about a week. It's gonna be an amazing event. 500 B2B SaaS founders. I'm looking at the attendee list. There's almost 60 founders with more than $67,000,000 in ARR. It's an incredible group of group. There's over 150

00:27with more than 1,000,000, more than a million revenue. It's an incredible group. You don't wanna miss it. Grab your hotel, grab your flight, grab a ticket right now. I'll put the link in the bio in the description here on YouTube. And I think there's only about three tickets left. Okay, about three tickets left. I'd love to see you guys there. Don't be bashful. Grab your ticket now. Hey, folks. My guest today is Banu Prasad. He's a

Guest Introduction: Banu Dhanakoti and HBox Overview

Nathan Latka

00:49serial entrepreneur, currently the Founder and CEO of hbox, a virtual first care platform company that helps customers in eight US states and is growing quickly. They've participated aggressively in the Indian investment ecosystem both as a venture partner in O'Reilly Ventures and as an angel investor. Banu, you ready to take us to the top?

Banu Dhanakoti

01:06>> Yeah. Sure. So it's basically my background is I'm a

Nathan Latka

01:10Well, Banu let me let me me let me lead here. Okay. Let me let me set you up for success with my audience. So, first off, if you wanna follow along, the the link is hbox.ai. And so, Banu, start with the start with the platform. Right? So when you say building virtual first care platform, what does that mean?

What HBox Does: Virtual First Care Platform Explained

Banu Dhanakoti

01:25>> So we are we are an end to end platform and services company, and we serve clinics across eight states in US where we not only provide the hardware and software technology, but we also provide end to end care delivery services like clinical care coaches with billing infrastructure and so on. So the basically, we do is we work with clinics, mostly specialty clinics like pulmonologist, cardiologist. What do you mean?

Nathan Latka

01:58Sorry, Banu, you keep using the word clinics. I don't understand.

Banu Dhanakoti

02:01>> So they are outpatient healthcare providers. Like if you, these are individual clean practices or group of physicians come together and create a legal entity that work with the hospital systems. So basically, those are healthcare clinics which specializes in three specialty areas which is pulmonology, cardiology and nephrology. We work with these

02:30>> physicians to create a virtual clinic inside their clinic. So, what does that really mean is we provide the required hardware and software for their patients and work with them to help them to monitor and manage their chronic condition.

Nathan Latka

02:48Understood. So you're selling to physicians that work with hospital chains, you're selling directly to those clinics. When you say hardware and software plus services, if you look at your total revenue from last year, what percent would you say was hardware sales?

Business Model: Subscription vs. Hardware Sales

Banu Dhanakoti

03:00>> So we don't the hardware is not sold as hardware. It's an integrated subscription model. So we lease those hardware to the patients. So our revenue is all subscription revenue. So we don't sell the hardware as a separate.

Nathan Latka

03:15So when you say the hardware is leased, what does the hardware, do you have, by way, can we see the hardware? Do you have it there near your desk? Can you hold it up?

Banu Dhanakoti

03:21>> No, unfortunately, I don't have it right now, but it essentially consists of a 10 inch display tablet, which we call as health pod that comes with different medical devices that gets attached to that tablet depending upon the chronic condition that we are managing for the patient. So, in case of pulmonologist, it can be as simple as pulse oximeter plus a spiro meter. In case of cardiologist, it would be a blood pressure monitor and in case of

03:57>> it can be a weighing scale. It can be a blood sugar monitor. And depending upon the chronic condition I see. The common element is that yeah.

Nathan Latka

04:05Go ahead.

04:06Please. Sorry. I wanna stay focused on on the hardware for a second. Okay? So the hbox smart kit I see on your website, which it looks like there's an iPad thing. There's a little thermometer gauge thing. There's a little finger thing to get your your blood pressure, I think, and a couple other tools. What does that hbox smart kit that I'm looking on your website, what does that cost you to purchase from the manufacturers?

The HBox Smart Kit: Hardware Components and Cost

Banu Dhanakoti

04:24>> So we for us landed, it comes to close to $200 landed in. So we do these are customized. Even though they are standardized product, it's branded hbox and we work with certain, know, so volume commitment and so on. So the total cost for us is around $200 landed.

Nathan Latka

04:45And what volume did you have to commit to with the manufacturer to get your price down to 200 landed?

Banu Dhanakoti

04:50>> So anything between it depends on the iPad volume, such medical devices. It's somewhere around 3,000 units.

Nathan Latka

04:593,000 units.

Banu Dhanakoti

05:00>> Okay. Time for manufacturing.

Nathan Latka

05:03Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you connect

05:26your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna

05:51get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here. Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity and red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is

06:13not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction 1,200,000 seed round 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're

06:38going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All right. We're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second. But

07:00if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into

07:26the interview. And and how is it $200 landed? Mean, there's an iPad I see in this package. I know iPads just by themselves are $500, $600, $700.

Banu Dhanakoti

07:35>> Yeah. So these are it looks like an iPad. Those are Android tablets, which are customized for hbox, so they come with our built in software. So they are not an iOS platform, are an Android.

Nathan Latka

07:49Okay, same question though, an Android tablet is going to cost just by itself more than $200.

Banu Dhanakoti

07:55>> Correct. That's where I meant that we tap into the, my previous venture was in the same space, so we work with contract manufacturers in China to bring down the cost.

Nathan Latka

08:08So you can get if you purchase three just talk about Android tablets for a second. If you purchase 3,000 units and commit to 3,000 units, you can get your cost for those Android tablets under, you know, 150 a unit.

Banu Dhanakoti

08:18>> Correct. That's right.

Nathan Latka

08:19Oh, wow. Okay. Got it. Okay.

08:21So your hardware's 200 landed.

08:22That makes a lot of sense. And then what do you lease? You mentioned you lease it back to your customers, the physicians What's and

08:29the monthly lease payment?

Pricing Model: Per Patient Per Month Billing

Banu Dhanakoti

08:30>> So we don't let me give you walk you through our business model. Right? We don't lease hardware separately. What we do is we charge per patient on a per month basis anywhere between depending on the volume of the clinic, anywhere between 60 to $79 per patient per month. Okay.

Nathan Latka

08:50And and what does that per patient? Is that number of patients in the system? Is that just the patients that visited that month?

Banu Dhanakoti

08:56>> No. Those are the patients that whom we have delivered this service with which includes the hardware.

Nathan Latka

09:05Okay. My question is a physician or clinic over a five year period might see a thousand patients.

Banu Dhanakoti

09:11>> Correct.

Nathan Latka

09:11But last month, maybe they only saw 10 patients. Are you billing against the 10 patients or the thousand patients?

Banu Dhanakoti

09:16>> No. 10 patients, but all those 10 patients would have been given this hardware that they can carry to the patient's home, and this is a subscription that patient, the physician prescribes to the patient for a twelve month period. So we So

Nathan Latka

09:33if I'm physician running a clinic in Kansas here in The US, and I go this month in August and I visit 20 clients in person at their house using your hardware kit, I will pay you for 20

Banu Dhanakoti

09:48>> No. No. No. Nathan, you got it wrong. It is that when the patient visit the physician, the the patient gets this kit to take it home.

09:59>> It's not the physician using using it. And when the patient takes their gets the kit to take it home and then they take use the kit on a daily basis and they are remotely monitored. And then we have our care coaches who help them to manage the chronic condition.

Nathan Latka

10:16I see. So the clinic in Kansas, me, I'm a physician, I might see 20 patients in a month. I'm gonna wanna give each of these 20 patients take to their house this tool that you gave me, the hbox smart kit. And then you're gonna bill me $60 per me as the clinic, 60 to $80 per month per per package or client that I visited the 20.

Banu Dhanakoti

10:38>> Correct. Correct.

Medicare Reimbursement as the Core Value Proposition

Nathan Latka

10:39I see.

Banu Dhanakoti

10:39>> I see. And the reason why you would do as a physician is because Medicare reimburses for these services. So Medicare reimburses anywhere between 140 to $200 per patient per month for you as a physician, and we help that process as well. We make the claims. We get the reimbursement for you as a physician. And then we charge yeah.

Nathan Latka

11:01So last month, how many physicians are paying you at least a dollar?

Current Metrics: 100 Physicians, $1.4M ARR, 1,800 Devices

Banu Dhanakoti

11:07>> So we today on our platform, we have close to 100 providers, what we call physicians, and we are generating our ARR right now is 1,400,000.

Nathan Latka

11:19And so what does that mean? Those 100 physicians, how many clients? Like, many kits have they handed out?

Banu Dhanakoti

11:23>> So totally, it's around 1,800 right now.

11:28>> Sorry.

Nathan Latka

11:29So one thousand eight hundred.

Banu Dhanakoti

11:30>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

11:31Okay. And so just to be clear, 1,800, you pay you pay $200 a pop. So that's $360,000 for those kids. Where did you get that money to buy make the initial hardware purchase?

Banu Dhanakoti

11:43>> Are initially the seed there is a two round of funding we have done. One is a seed round, which is a small safe note that we raised capital last year, August. And then right now, we did a pre series a safe note as well. So the my equity is through safe note. So when you

Nathan Latka

12:01did when you did the round last year, how much was that for?

Banu Dhanakoti

12:05>> That was a safe note. So the valuation cap was 5,000,000, and this year, it is 30,000,000.

Nathan Latka

12:10How much did you raise, though, last year?

Banu Dhanakoti

12:13>> It was 750 k.

Nathan Latka

12:15So you raised 750,000 on a safe note pre seed round at a 5,000,000 cap, and then you raised your traditional seed round this year?

Banu Dhanakoti

12:22>> Yes. That's also on safe note and 30,000,000 valuation cap, and we have raised another 800 k.

Nathan Latka

12:29800 k. Okay. That makes sense. Got it. And so if you're doing 1,400,000 in ARR today, what were you doing exactly a year ago? Do you remember?

Revenue Growth: From $100K to $1.4M ARR in One Year

Banu Dhanakoti

12:38>> Yeah. It was around 100 k. We just started. So the company the first commercial launch with a clinic was happened last year, April.

Nathan Latka

12:49I see. So 1,400,000 run rate today is means you're doing about 115,000 a month in revenue. One year ago today, you were only doing, like, 5 or 10,000 a month in revenue.

Banu Dhanakoti

12:59>> Correct.

Nathan Latka

13:00>> Correct.

13:00I see. That's right.

13:01Wow. So nice growth. How have you signed up? How have you found a 100 physicians in The US to sell to?

Banu Dhanakoti

13:07>> Sure. That's an interesting story in itself. So what we have done is we have worked with the initial customers that we acquired through our Connect to make sure that they generate revenue through the Medicare reimbursement process that has led us a strong bond. So all of the 100 providers that we have on our platform is through referrals from existing our customers. So we don't have a single sales person or a team that is going after.

Go-to-Market: 100% Referral-Driven Growth

Nathan Latka

13:34Okay. But but, Banu, that's not so how did you get the first customer?

Banu Dhanakoti

13:39>> That first customer was through a connect of our my previous venture, and we had first three customer was through our network. And after that, those customers have referred other customers, and those customers have referred other composite customers because the value and the business model for in from our perspective drives that kind of referral program. Mhmm.

Nathan Latka

14:04And if there's 1,800 in the wild today, you know, kits, devices, again, you charge 60 to 80 per month there. Where do you where's most of your revenue growth coming from? Is it is it one physician getting more clients or is it adding new physicians altogether?

Banu Dhanakoti

14:21>> It's a combination of the both. So what happens is once we add what I call as clinic can consist of multiple physicians within a clinic, right? So once we add a clinic onto our platform and a provider or a physician onto our platform, takes at least continues to grow the patient because as you said, in your Kansas example, there are 10 patients visited this month, next day, next 10 patients visit next month. So that's an engine

14:49>> that gets kick started. And then we add other clinics. So it's a combination of clinics and providers on our platform, which will continue to grow as well as adding new clinics and new providers. So we have a strong pipeline, as I said, the referral network kicks in and they refer more and that adds on to our top line.

Nathan Latka

15:11One way to ask this question is to look at your net dollar retention. So what is your net dollar retention in the past twelve months?

Banu Dhanakoti

15:18>> It is pretty much we haven't lost a single client so far because it's it's very simple because our model is I would say still we are early on in the innings because it's it we are in business only for last twelve months, and so it's very hard to compute those numbers yet, but based on our retention so far, we haven't lost a single customer yet.

Nathan Latka

15:45Yeah, Banu. So net dollar retention is really asking, it's a combination of have you lost any, but also how much have you upsold? Right? So when you look at the customers that you're working with exactly one year ago, what percent have they expanded by?

Banu Dhanakoti

15:56>> Oh, sure. So that's been phenomenal, right? So it's been like, typically the way we measure our business is if you sign up a physician and if they have a thousand patients in their EMR system for last one year and it takes close to a year for us to grow their, to enroll their patients, 26% of that. So it's roughly, we add from, it takes for a thousand patients, two sixty patients have been added in the last

16:27>> nine months.

Nathan Latka

16:29Okay, but that doesn't make sense because if all 100 physicians you're working with have added two sixty right, patients, that's way more than 1,800.

Banu Dhanakoti

16:38>> Yeah. That's a great question. Right? So most of these patients we have added is in the last three months.

Nathan Latka

16:44I see. So how many patients how how many clinics how many clinics were you working with exactly one year ago?

Banu Dhanakoti

16:50>> It's only three.

Nathan Latka

16:51Three. Okay. Got it. Cool. What when those clients signed up, those three clinics a year ago, how many patients did they start with? What was the first order they purchased?

Banu Dhanakoti

17:02>> The first month was, like, 20 people.

Nathan Latka

17:05And And what have they expanded to now today?

17:07260?

Banu Dhanakoti

17:08>> Yeah. Around 200 to 300. Very simple.

Nathan Latka

17:11Yeah. Tell me more about the team. How many are full time today?

Banu Dhanakoti

17:15>> We are around 30 people.

Nathan Latka

17:17Three zero?

Banu Dhanakoti

17:18>> Three zero.

Nathan Latka

17:19And And how many engineers?

Banu Dhanakoti

17:21>> Around, nine people. All are in India. Our r and d team is in India, but the rest of the team, what we call as a customer success and care coaches, which are medical clinical staff, are all based out of US.

Nathan Latka

17:35Yeah. Very cool. And do you have CAC? Are you paying or or doing any paid spend to get customers?

Banu Dhanakoti

17:41>> No. This is so far, we have been lucky. As I said, we are going through referral programs and which is basically the existing customer referring other physicians to get onto our platform.

Team: 30 People, 9 Engineers in India

Nathan Latka

17:53And what dollar volume of Medicaid or Medicare reimbursements have you processed personally through the system?

Banu Dhanakoti

18:00>> So, so far, right now, as I said, for us to generate a 120 k per month, so we are processing close to 300, 350 k per month of claims.

Nathan Latka

18:15Okay. Are you are you are all those $350,000 and claims monthly getting accepted and reimbursed?

Banu Dhanakoti

18:20>> Yes. Yes. That's the reason why we get close to half of it from as our invoice.

Nathan Latka

18:29Okay. Got it. Very interesting. What's the total opportunity here? How many, you know, patients are at home where, you know, clinics and physicians have to give them this hardware device?

Banu Dhanakoti

18:39>> Sure. So that's another great question, right? So with the 100 providers, we can potentially reach close to 180,000 patients. That's just our installed clinics and providers. But if you look at the overall market size, in Medicare, there are close to forty million patients with chronic condition that can be prescribed this solution.

Nathan Latka

19:04And are you guys profitable today? Are you burning cash?

Banu Dhanakoti

19:06>> We are burning cash predominantly because of the upfront growth that we are seeing in investing in the hardware and so on.

Nathan Latka

19:13Yeah. How much are you burning per month?

Burn Rate, Runway, and Capital Structure Decisions

Banu Dhanakoti

19:16>> We are burning close to not much. It's around 30 k.

Nathan Latka

19:20Does that make you nervous?

Banu Dhanakoti

19:22>> Yeah. And it is nervous because of two reasons. Right? One is whether when to raise significant amount of equity that would help to continue to the growth versus kind of managing our equity very smartly. And that's the challenge because our business, the best part of our business is that we are generating cash from day one and this is a and the subscription model is very consistent for twelve months because this is backed by Medicare reimbursement and

19:59>> there's a chronic condition that needs to be managed. So there is not so much volatility in the patient population pool. So all those gives a good view into our revenue stream being stable. But having said that, how do we, the equity part, the challenge to answer your question, the challenge for us is how much to rise through equity versus the growth and which would give us the optimal return for us as the founders in the long

20:25>> run.

Nathan Latka

20:26Do you still have a 100% of the $800,000 seed round cash in the bank?

Banu Dhanakoti

20:30>> We have close to 600.

Nathan Latka

20:33Okay. So do you I mean, how many does you I mean, that that would mean your runway, what is about twenty months. Are you okay with that amount of runway today?

Banu Dhanakoti

20:41>> It's actually yeah. I'm okay as long as we are happy with the growth. The problem we are trying to solve is to increase the growth, and there was a huge problem possibility to increase the growth. And hence, we are now internally debating whether we should raise equity capital or through some other debt financing and other routes because the

Nathan Latka

21:02If you raise debt, how much would you try and raise?

Banu Dhanakoti

21:05>> Close to and it needs to be paced out. So we are looking at anywhere between 1 to 1,500,000 to cover our hardware cost. The real challenge for us is to if we right now, we are adding 300 patients a month. And as I said, we have added lot of new providers onto our platform who have not started the engine. Once they start the engine, that 300 patients per month will go to thousand patients per month in

21:35>> next three to four months, which drastically increases our working capital need. Yep. That's the challenge we are trying to resolve whether equity is the only way. We are in talks with some series a health tech VCs as well, but considering the valuations and those kind of things, that is where we are internally figuring out what is the right capital structure for us to optimize as we move forward.

Nathan Latka

22:01Shocked if you can get a series a investor today in the compressed market to give you evaluation higher than your last round or your last round cap of 30,000,000. I mean, that's almost a 25 x multiple. You're just not seeing those today anymore. I'd I'd be shocked.

Banu Dhanakoti

22:13>> Yeah. But we when we raised the 5,000,000, we didn't have any yeah.

Nathan Latka

22:19Wait. You raised 5,000,000?

Banu Dhanakoti

22:20>> No. Not raised 5,000,000. When the valuation cap in the previous year was 5,000,000, that Yeah.

Nathan Latka

22:26But you just said you raised it 30,000,000. Right? You say you raised 800,000 and 30,000,000 cap.

Banu Dhanakoti

22:29>> 30,000,000. Correct.

Nathan Latka

22:31Yeah. It's a 21 x multiple and 1,400,000 in ARR. I'd be shocked if you find a VC today to lead your series a that's willing to pay higher than a 21 x multiple considering the compressed market.

Banu Dhanakoti

22:40>> Yeah. But the the current we will be reaching close to 3,000,000 ARR by end of this year. So it's next another 4 to 4 to 5 months because Yeah.

Nathan Latka

22:52I it's incredible growth, but even that to beat a 30,000,000 valuation with 3,000,000 ARR means you got to get someone to pay higher than a 10 x. I'm seeing fast growth companies today not be able to get 10 x multiples like they used to eight months ago. So we'll see what happens. But the nice thing is you've got nice growth and you got twenty months of runway. On that note, Banu, let's wrap up here with the

Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Personal Background

Nathan Latka

23:09famous five. Number one, favorite business book.

Banu Dhanakoti

23:13>> How to make elephants dance.

23:16>> Okay.

Nathan Latka

23:17Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Banu Dhanakoti

23:20>> Elon Musk.

Nathan Latka

23:21Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building hbox?

Banu Dhanakoti

23:26>> Metabase. Metabase.

Nathan Latka

23:28Number four. How many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Banu Dhanakoti

23:31>> Close to six hours.

Nathan Latka

23:33That's good. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Banu Dhanakoti

23:36>> I'm married, and I have one eleventh grade daughter.

Nathan Latka

23:41Oh, amazing. And how old are you?

Banu Dhanakoti

23:43>> I'm 45.

23:44>> 45.

Nathan Latka

23:45Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Banu Dhanakoti

23:49>> Yeah. The start the entrepreneurial journey little bit earlier than where I started. I started around ten years back, so 35. I wish I did it a little bit earlier. That was one meme.

Nathan Latka

24:03Hbox was doing $10,000 a month in revenue a year ago, now doing a $120,000 a month for a 1,400,000 run rate. They're giving iPads and temperature monitors and finger pulse monitors to physicians. A 100 physicians use their setup hardware, which they then give out. Sell out though they give out basically to patients who have to stay at home, right? So they can do home monitoring. Currently across these 100 physicians, they've got 1,800 devices out in the wild. They

24:31charge a physician between $60 $80 per month per hardware step they've given out. The nice thing is they also help the physicians get Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement for the tool. It's still net positive for them. They're scaling nicely, raised an $800,000 seed on a safe with a 30,000,000 cap recently, deciding now if they raise more equity or debt to fund an additional tranche of hardware purchases. We'll see what happens. Banu, thanks for taking us to the

24:52top.

Banu Dhanakoti

24:53>> Thanks, Nathan.

Nathan Latka

24:56One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday, 1PM

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26:05for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode and if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We

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