Trading Real Estate For A Dream: How An Undertaking Engulfed A Doctor And His Father In Bootstrapping A Health-Tech Platform From The City Of Rajkot

A doctor and his father traded retirement savings to bootstrap Docthub, a health-tech platform empowering India’s medical professionals.

Almost everyone would be unwilling to stake their future on a startup. For Dr. Sandip Patel and his father, however, it was an option they decided to pursue in 2017.

Three properties were disposed of; all were to be for the retirement of the father. The idea was funded by selling the three properties in a tiny corner at Rajkot. What started from a tiny idea is now Docthub-a healthcare career platform that supports thousands of doctors and students from all across India in finding jobs, courses, and other opportunities in medicine.

But it did not start as a tech company.

Dr. Patel was originally a physician who helped hospitals find their medical staff. In no time, he saw how terribly old and disjointed the system was, making it very hard for young professionals in smaller towns to prosper. "There were so many gaps," he says. "I kept thinking: what if there was a single place where people could find all the information connected to their medical career?"

That very question pushed them into a mission. However, developing this into a tech platform was a big challenge.

"I didn't come from tech," admits Dr. Patel. "A lot of mistakes happened in the first three years. I had to learn everything on the fly — how to design a website, how to lead a team, how to really listen to the users and understand what they needed."

His perseverance was supported by a quiet but steady flow of support from his father. The father-son duo had invested approximately ₹12 crores in the business over seven years, not through an investor or by way of a big funding round, but through their savings and by selling three family properties.

The words are still frozen in memory: "It was scary" for him. Those properties were meant for giving my father security after retirement. But he believed in me. Such trust gives strength.

Rather than chase investors, Dr. Patel chose instead to bootstrap: With slow building, focus on real issues, and ensuring that the platform actually mattered to end users.

Docthub currently operates as a one-stop platform for healthcare professionals, offering job listings and online courses--it has really brought together resources that used to be scattered across various websites, agencies, or even different cities.

Dr. Patel looks back at the days gone by and realizes that the process was tedious but worth the journey. "This isn't just a company. It is a promise I made to my father that his sacrifice would go into something meaningful."

And with every young junior doctor or student that has stood on firm ground with Docthub, the promise is being lived out.