(L-R) BuyMed Co-Founders Vu Vuong, Peter Nguyen, and Hoang Nguyen
Vietnam’s pharmaceutical industry is fragmented and disorganised, with numerous manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. There are noncompliance issues, inefficiencies, and a lack of knowledge sharing, which have led to higher costs, lower quality, and a general lack of development.
Peter Nguyen, Vu Vuong, and Hoang Nguyen — who came from varied backgrounds — sensed an opportunity there and embarked on a journey to solve this problem using technology.
Also Read: Revolutionising healthcare in Vietnam: The reality of healthtech unveiled
“Hoang and I were strategy and operations consultants for a boutique strategy consulting firm in Southeast Asia. During our time as consultants, we encountered a fragmented and inefficient healthcare system in Southeast Asia,” says Peter. “However, there were many specific problems to solve in the healthcare domain. We couldn’t narrow down the problem we wanted to focus on initially. We discussed various hurdles faced by the industry in the country and came up with the idea of BuyMed (Thuocsi.vn).”
Connecting different stakeholders
Established in 2018, BuyMed is an e-commerce platform to connect pharmaceutical manufacturers, distributors, and clinics. It aims to simplify the procurement process to guarantee quality products and competitive prices. The firm claims it is servicing over 30,000 unique pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals across Vietnam.
In the initial months, the founders faced the challenges of educating different stakeholders of the pharmaceutical industry about the benefits of BuyMed. Thankfully, the COVID-19 breakout ‘came to its rescue’. “During the lockdown-induced lockdowns, we delivered medicine to pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals. This allowed us to demonstrate our values to the community of practitioners that it is deeply ingrained in serving practitioners, patients, and all the stakeholders in the healthcare value chain,” Peter explains.
“We had a very strong and passionate team which understood the criticality of the services we provided to the country and the community. The team made a lot of incredible personal sacrifices so that our platform could continue delivering critical medicines to the entire country. Through sheer brute-force hard work and support from key stakeholders, we could continue providing medicine to the whole country during lockdowns,” he shares.
The healthtech firm follows a collaboration model for practices that supply and consigns the practitioners’ entire inventory. This way, practitioners can increase their inventory by over 50 per cent and lower their costs of goods sold by 20 per cent, which leads to improved access to medicine in urban and rural areas.
For suppliers, the startup offers a range of partnerships, from buy-and-resell models to strategic alliances, managing their entire sales, fulfilment, logistics, and payment. According to Peter, this enables better competitiveness for domestic pharmaceutical manufacturers.
The firm claims it currently processes over 5,000 orders daily, has over 30,000 unique practices using its platform, over 10,000 unique SKUs sold, and reaches over 12,000 townships across Vietnam.
BuyMed recently announced its foray into Thailand and Cambodia, where it sees immense opportunities. “Healthcare is an infinite industry where customers can never have too much. You can always live longer and live healthier. And healthcare systems are always chasing more and better coverage for cheaper costs,” he adds. “Our team will continue expanding the number of communities we serve regardless of borders and politics, which will take us to more countries across the Asia Pacific.”
The company has fulfilment and logistics hubs in every province across Vietnam. It will invest in its logistics capabilities, such as cold chain, to become a leading logistics solutions provider for pharmaceutical and personal care products.
Also Read: BuyMed nets US$8.8M to develop a healthtech e-commerce platform, expand beyond Vietnam
BuyMed also has plans to expand to other ancillary categories. According to the company, it has seen an increasing demand for more sophisticated pharmaceutical products, previously unaccessible to its practitioners because they are either in rural areas or do not have the working capital, such as increasing demand for innovator pharmaceuticals.
The startup will continue developing urban and rural healthcare, primarily focusing on developing primary care pharmacy and clinic networks across Vietnam.
“Leveraging our existing practitioner network, which now spans every township and village in Vietnam, our next area of focus is improving the amount and quality of healthcare services provided by our practitioner network beyond just basic pharmaceuticals to providing a wide range of community-improving products and services which can improve individual and societal health,” Peter says.
Leveraging AI
BuyMed recently closed a US$51.5 million Series B round led by UOB with participation from DFC, Smilegate, and Cocoon Capital. Besides expanding its services, the company will utilise the capital to enhance its platforms and infrastructure.
“We plan to integrate AI and are working with experts in AI to develop an engine to forecast demand for medicine throughout the country using a variety of data points. This would allow us to predict spikes in demand for certain medicines and work with suppliers to ensure availability. Such data can be shared with governments for their public health policies also,” he shares.
“By leveraging cutting-edge technology and strategic investments, we aspire to boost productivity, streamline processes, and play a pivotal role in fostering the expansion of the healthcare supply industry,” Nguyen wraps up.
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Image Credit: BuyMed.
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