Anand Prakash is the founder and CEO of WhiteGlove.
White Gloves
For Anand Prakash, Dropbox and LinkedIn gave birth to WhiteGlove.
A new company launched by Silicon Valley veterans emerged from stealth on Wednesday with big promises. In a press release, White Glove touted itself as the industry’s first organization to offer what it calls “the first full-service healthcare concierge for international care coordination.” The company said its mission is to provide a “streamlined approach” to managing the healthcare of loved ones living abroad. White Glove will initially focus on India.
Speaking to me over email in an exclusive interview ahead of today’s announcement, Prakash explained that he had lost close family members to various “preventable health issues.” After such heartache and mourning, Prakash has dedicated the last two decades to making a difference when it comes to India’s healthcare crisis. He has done this by leveraging his interest and expertise in technology and management. He said these are aided by his decades of experience in “building and scaling platforms that solve complex problems across international markets.” Prakash has helped found multiple startups in his career, including GupShup, India’s largest enterprise messaging platform. At LinkedIn, he played a key role in scaling the company’s mobile infrastructure to reach millions of users. In short, Prakash was brimming with confidence as he said his previous roles prepared him for the challenge known as WhiteGlove.
“My work in AI, messaging and cloud technology has prepared me to tackle the unique challenges of healthcare for families overseas,” he said.
Prakash’s work with White Glove is rooted in accessibility, even if it’s not explicitly stated. According to Prakash, India has a lot of issues with the country’s healthcare system: a shortage of doctors, long wait times for patients, and a lack of preventative care. He further noted that “commercial interests” encourage “unnecessary” surgeries and other procedures, and that India’s lack of electronic health records (known as EHRs in the U.S.) increases hospital inefficiencies and, even worse, the potential for fraud. These factors combined to create a reason for White Glove’s existence, as Prakash told me, because India’s underdeveloped setup often means that U.S.-based people (like him) have to travel to India to ensure their loved ones aren’t taken advantage of and receive proper care. Traveling thousands of miles is taxing in many ways, so Prakash and his team are leveraging technology to make it easier for everyone to do their jobs.
“As the need to ensure consistent (and) reliable healthcare for families becomes increasingly urgent in India, we noticed a gap: the lack of a service that combines digitized healthcare management with personalized, concierge-level care,” he said of his company’s market opportunity.
According to Prakash, the US and India are similar in that they both face the challenge of a physician workforce shortage. The difference is that the Indian healthcare market is at a “different stage of development” compared to the US, where services are fragmented in addition to the aforementioned lack of electronic health records. Prakash added that India has a much lesser focus on preventive care compared to the US, noting that the US healthcare system “typically benefits from a more integrated infrastructure and focus on holistic care.”
As WhiteGlove details in a press release, the company uses artificial intelligence to digitize a person’s health history before conducting a full-body exam to determine their needs. WhiteGlove’s doctors meet with patients virtually over the internet, who identify urgent issues and refer them to in-person care if necessary. As another consideration to accessibility, WhiteGlove also assists with scheduling appointments and coordinating traffic. Patients have access to telehealth 24/7, and family members who live far away (like Prakash) can track their loved one’s progress using a patient portal. Reminders for appointments and medications can also be sent through this interface. On the technology side of things for WhiteGlove, Prakash said that using AI and machine learning allows the company to “digitize health records, personalize healthcare plans, predict health risks, and provide actionable insights,” ultimately “ensuring a customized and efficient user experience.” For medical professionals, WhiteGlove provides doctors with an AI-powered dashboard that Prakash says can “uncover insights from years of medical history, giving medical teams the right context to make informed decisions about each patient’s healthcare plan.”
Prakash again expressed confidence in White Glove’s success.
“My background in founding and growing technology companies, combined with my experience navigating the challenges of caring for loved ones across borders, makes me uniquely positioned to lead White Glove,” he said of his strengths. “I understand both the logistical hurdles and the emotional stress that expatriates face. Elderly care is deeply valued in Indian culture, and I wanted to create a solution that would respect this tradition while also simplifying the process for people living abroad.”
When asked about the feedback, Prakash said it’s been “incredibly positive.” White Glove has opened a waiting list through 2025, and he said the external demand for this kind of service has been “overwhelming.” In just two months, the company has already put 400 households on its waiting list through good old-fashioned word-of-mouth advertising. Prakash said the anticipation and excitement for White Glove’s official launch reflects “the urgency and need for a solution” like the one he and his team are trying to provide.
Looking to the future, Prakash stressed that WhiteGlove has big ambitions. The company aims to improve India’s healthcare system, not just manage it. Prakash and his team’s ultimate dream is to eventually build the largest network of primary care providers in the world.
“Our platform aims to bring a new level of preventive medicine and personalized healthcare management to India, setting a benchmark in quality and efficiency in healthcare across borders,” Prakash said about the company’s future roadmap. “As we grow, we plan to expand our network of healthcare providers, integrate advanced AI capabilities, and explore opportunities in other countries facing similar healthcare challenges. We also aim to partner with leading healthcare institutions and continuously enhance our platform based on user feedback. We aim to usher in a new era of healthcare, where early diagnosis using full-body MRI and other preventive tests will prevent serious health issues from occurring in the first place.”
