Caelen King’s firm, Whatclinic.com, has had a tough infancy but the firm is planning to hire 26 new staff over the next year as it eyes global expansion.

Founded by King in 2006 (then called Revahealth), Whatclinic has been struggling to turn a profit, despite the 1.5 million online visits that the company says it gets each month.

Whatclinic is a global healthcare comparison site enables patients to compare and review over 120,000 private healthcare clinics across 135 countries worldwide. The site also provides an online booking facility and independent price checks.

The most recent filed accounts show that Whatclinic booked a loss of €766,000 in 2013, bringing accumulated losses to €2.8m. The firm had year-end cash of €1.3m.

Investors have been piling into King’s business since it launched. Delta Partners put €2m into Whatclinic in 2012 and the firm raised €100,000 from private investors the year before. King also raised €500,000 in 2006, while in 2008, Enterprise Ireland invested €500,000 in Whatclinic.

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King’s latest recruitment drive will double Whatclinic’s sales and customer care team. It currently employs 60 people in its Dublin HQ, with additional staff based in Poland and Brazil.

According to King, the increasing visitor numbers to his site indicates that there is a growing need for independent and trustworthy information around private healthcare.

He added: “We have a strong team of innovative and inspiring people and we are looking to build on this as we expand our consumer offering into global healthcare markets.”

Whatclinic’s biggest market is the UK and the vast majority of its overall revenue is export-based. The most common enquiries through the site are for GPs, dentistry, hair-loss treatments, medical aesthetic procedures and plastic surgery.

Whatclinic.com founder Caelen King