Not everyone gets access to healthcare in Indonesia. The country only has 0.4 doctors for every 1000 residents. This problem is further complicated by the traffic jam in big cities like Jakarta and having to deliver healthcare to residents on over 17,000 islands across the country.
To address this challenge, Doddy Lukito founded Halodoc in 2016 together with his Co-Founder Jonathan Sudharta with the mission to simplify healthcare for Indonesians.
They’ve grown from 6 million patients per month in 2019 to serving over 20 million patients in Indonesia every single month in 2022. That is almost four times the size of Singapore’s population!
I had an enjoyable conversation with Lukito and was excited to learn how telemedicine technology can be used to set up drive-through vaccination centres during the COVID-19 pandemic, the biggest challenges when running a health tech platform, and valuable advice on how to deal with the ongoing tech winter.
Start with why: Focus on the problem you’re trying to solve
Lukito opened up about the biggest wake-up call he had while running Halodoc. A few years back, Halodoc launched a new product. The team built the product, prepared the operations team, and the launch was even covered by the media.
Yet, after all the effort and resources and waiting one entire month, there were only two users! This major setback made the team realise that they jumped directly into the solution without “thinking about whether the solution solves the pain point of the users”.
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Since then, for every new initiative, the team often starts by answering the question, “What is the pain point that we are solving”? They believe that with the focus on solving critical problems, the “product-market fit will be there, and business will flourish”.
Yet, the nature of the problems is often dynamic and influenced by changes in the world. In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit Indonesia, Halodoc used its technology to help Indonesians book COVID-19 tests and rolled out a drive-through COVID-19 testing service.
In the following year, when vaccinations were available in Indonesia, Halodoc expanded its appointment service and centres to help Indonesians book COVID-19 vaccinations.
The message is clear: If we are constantly solving real problems, we are generating value at work, and this translates into how relevant and valuable we are as businesses and tech workers. On the contrary, if we do not start with the why and fail to solve a problem, it does not set up for success.
Lukito’s advice on dealing with tech winter for the first-time entrepreneurs
Having been in the technology industry for more than 18 years, this was not his first tech winter, and he came from a place of experience.
When asked how Halodoc was dealing with it, Lukito shared that since their Series B round, they have already committed to investors that they have a roadmap to being a sustainable business. This means that every service that they launch needs to have a positive unit of economics.
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I shared with him that there were some of my peers in their 20s and 30s who were experiencing a downturn for the first time. Their stock-based compensation dwindled, crypto savings crashed, and some of their friends in the industry had also been impacted by layoffs.
Lukito shared several actionable steps one could take to protect themselves.
One of his advice was to learn as much as possible and “don’t stay in your comfort zone”. This echoes Warren Buffet’s advice at the end of the Great Recession, where he shared that the best thing to do during those troubling economic times was for people to invest in themselves and learn new things.
He also emphasised twice on the importance of focusing on productivity. This advice echoes that of leaders at big tech companies like Meta and Google, who have highlighted the same to their workers.
Convincing others to adopt new ways of doing things?
When I asked Lukito about some of his biggest challenges running Halodoc, I was not expecting this answer. The biggest challenge is convincing stakeholders such as patients and healthcare providers that they could use telemedicine without sacrificing quality.
He shared that some Indonesians were initially not used to talking to doctors online and still believed that “If I am not being touched by my doctor, I can’t recover”. We all need to convince stakeholders at work and in our lives. Lukito shared three useful pointers on how we can win others over.
- Give proof that you can understand and solve their problems first.
- Change needs to be incremental. They started with one drive-through centre and added more over time once they proved the impact.
- Use data to your advantage. Gather the data, analyse it, and present it to demonstrate impact. Win trust and expand more facilities
Overall, I enjoyed the conversation with Lukito. Whether you work in tech or just started your own company, I am sure you would have a lot to learn from his story and lessons in running the largest healthtech startup in Indonesia.
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