HD Co-Founder and CEO Sheji Ho
Less than eight months after securing US$6 million in funding from some of the top VCs in Southeast Asia, Bangkok-headquartered HD attracted a new round of “significant investment” from Vietnamese VC firm FEBE Ventures.
HD, which runs HDmall (a healthcare and surgery marketplace) and HDcare (an elective surgery product) in Thailand and Indonesia, is looking to deepen its presence in the region and expand into new markets.
Also Read: ‘Airbnb for surgeries’ HDmall gets FEBE Ventures backing to deepen market presence in SEA
e27 caught up with HD Co-Founder and CEO Sheji Ho to discuss the company’s plans.
Below are the edited excerpts from the interview:
Can you disclose the deal size and other details?
We’re not in a position to disclose the funding amount, but it’s a considerable sum on top of our last US$6 million which will enable us to achieve our goals.
HD plans to deepen your market presence in Southeast Asia. Does this mean you plan to expand into new markets or expand further in your existing markets?
As a marketplace business, our lifeline is liquidity. Therefore, our main priority is to continue to add more healthcare providers to our platform, whether it’s hospitals, clinics, operating rooms, or surgeons.
We entered into our recent strategic partnership with Johnson & Johnson MedTech to do this. Our collaboration with them has been pivotal in accelerating our supply-side acquisition efforts.
Regarding geographical expansion, we plan to cement our leadership position in Thailand, accelerate our Indonesia marketplace liquidity, and enter Vietnam next year.
What synergy does HD see with FEBE Ventures? Do you want to open an office in Vietnam as well?
We consider FEBE as a strategic partner for our Vietnam market entry. It understands what it takes to build and operate a business. With its experience and network, we’ll be able to work closely with the firm to launch our healthcare and surgery marketplace in Vietnam.
FEBE also sees a blue ocean opportunity for our business model, which currently does not exist in Vietnam; most startups there are telehealth, online pharmacy, or insurance-focused.
How has HDcare grown since its launch in January? Do you foresee a strong demand for elective surgery in SEA?
Our HDcare elective surgery business has grown 30x since its launch. This is driven by a rapid supply-side expansion in terms of the number of hospitals offering us operating rooms and the amounts of surgeons on our platform.
In addition, our strategic partnership with Johnson & Johnson Medtech only recently kicked in, and overall we’re already seeing patient inquiries up 50 per cent from July going into August.
And we’re only scratching the surface; the private healthcare opportunity in emerging SEA markets is massive. Thailand alone is estimated to have a US$7 billion private healthcare market size (self-pay and private insurance).
With healthcare spending in emerging SEA expected to outpace GDP growth by 3x, we’re looking at a combined US$100 billion+ private healthcare opportunity by 2033 for Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Myanmar.
Elective surgeries outside social security coverage alone take up half this opportunity at over US$50 billion.
Do you plan to add new products and venture into new verticals?
We’re currently 100 per cent focused on our ‘dual engine’ strategy of running HDmall (mostly outpatient) and HDcare (inpatient, elective surgeries).
Also Read: These former aCommerce execs are building an ‘Amazon’ for healthcare in Southeast Asia
That said, there’s been interest from insurers to work with us more closely. They see our elective surgery network as a lower-cost option to reduce their claim costs.
Also, there’s a huge opportunity to use our healthcare data set to train Large Medical Models (LMMs) in the future to automate and optimise different parts of the insurance value chain, for example, prior authorisations and utility management.
Can you share your m-o-m revenue growth over the past three months?
Fueled by our HDcare expansion, we’ve been able to continue to grow consistently at double-digit month-on-month percentages.
You plan to achieve profitability by the end of the year. Do you have any concrete plans to achieve this goal? Does it also mean you will go frugal by cutting costs, reducing staff, etc.?
Our profitability milestone will be mainly achieved by scaling our current business, particularly HDcare elective surgeries. We’ve been running our business quite efficiently, especially compared to other startups that previously raised large sums of money during the bull market.
What are HD’s short-term and long-term plans?
Our immediate goals are to accelerate marketplace liquidity for both HDmall and HDcare so we can offer more accessible and affordable healthcare and surgeries to patients in our markets.
Over the long term, we see an opportunity to work closely with insurers and employers to reach even more patients with affordable, high-quality care and surgeries.
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(The second picture used in this article is AI-generated)
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