Practo's Zomato Moment Is Coming — Vizag Clinics Should Get Ahead of It

What Just Happened to Zomato

Earlier this year, a restaurant owner posted screenshots of his Zomato payout dashboard: ₹16,486 earned, ₹415 actually paid out. The breakdown was 35% platform commission, 34% eaten by a discount the restaurant was funding, and 38% spent on ads just to stay visible in search — the categories overlapped and stacked until almost nothing was left. The post went viral on X. It wasn't an isolated complaint — restaurant owners across the country had been saying versions of the same thing for months, and the Competition Commission of India has since acknowledged allegations of exactly this pattern: exorbitant commissions, delayed payment cycles, and unfair contract terms baked into the platform relationship.

That's not a hypothetical. It's a live antitrust matter.

Practo Is Already Getting the Same Complaint

The healthcare version of this story is already being written — just quieter, one doctor at a time instead of one viral post.

In November 2024, a urologist, Dr. Vinay Rai, publicly said Practo was charging him for phone calls from patients who never actually booked a consultation — a connection fee of roughly ₹350–450 per inquiry, whether or not it converted. His complaint, as reported by Medical Dialogues, was blunt: *"You may charge your platform fee if a consultation is booked... but how can you charge a doctor to just receive a call?"*

That's one doctor, one publicised complaint. But the underlying commission structure is well documented: on a typical booked consultation, doctors report Practo's cut running in the 28–40% range once platform fees and taxes are deducted — on a ₹500 consultation, one commonly cited breakdown has the doctor netting ₹360 after a ₹100 platform fee plus ₹40 tax. That's before the connection-fee complaint even enters the picture.

Nobody's called it Practo's "Zomato moment" yet. The math is the same story, one industry behind.

Why Vizag Clinics Should Care More Than Most

This isn't really about Practo specifically — it's about what it means to have exactly one channel between you and every new patient who doesn't already know your name.

In a market like Mumbai or Bangalore, a doctor has a dozen visible alternatives: multiple directories, heavy word-of-mouth density, hospital-affiliation referral networks. In Visakhapatnam, the practical alternatives are thinner. A specialist clinic here that has built its entire new-patient pipeline around one directory listing isn't diversified — it's dependent. And dependency on a single channel is exactly the position that lets any platform raise its take rate over time with very little the clinic can do about it, short of walking away from the leads entirely.

The Zomato story didn't end with restaurants abandoning the platform. It ended with restaurants finally posting the real numbers publicly, and platforms facing real regulatory scrutiny as a result. The lesson for a clinic isn't "delete your Practo listing" — it's "don't let a directory be the only place a new patient can find you."

The Actual Fix Isn't Leaving Practo. It's Not Depending On It.

A Practo listing that brings in a share of new patients isn't the problem by itself. The problem is when it's the *only* channel — when a clinic has no Google Business Profile worth finding, no way to bring a first-time caller back without paying a platform fee every single time, and no owned way to reach a patient again after their first visit.

The fix is boring, which is exactly why most clinics haven't done it yet:

1. Own your Google Maps presence. A well-optimised Google Business Profile is free, and for local "dentist near me" or "[specialist] in Vizag" searches, it competes directly with directory listings — without a per-lead fee.
2. Build a WhatsApp recall system. Once a patient has visited once, a rebooking or follow-up message sent directly costs nothing per contact. That's the entire channel Practo charges for, permanently removed from the fee structure for repeat patients.
3. Keep the directory listing — but stop treating it as your only front door. Direct search visibility and WhatsApp recall don't compete with a Practo listing; they just mean a rising commission on it stops being able to hold your patient volume hostage.

None of this requires walking away from Practo tomorrow. It requires not being the clinic that finds out the real commission number the hard way, the same week a competitor already has their own channel built.

Related Resources for Vizag Clinics

• Healthcare Growth System for Vizag Clinics
• Local SEO for Doctors in Vizag
• Practo Alternative for Clinics
• Patient Recall System India
• JustDial Alternative for Doctors

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