Med247 manages to secure its seed funding round prior to its business launch

Med247, an offline-to-online (O2O) healthtech startup that facilitates app-based post-treatment after offline visit to its clinic in Vietnam, announces an undisclosed amount of investment from KK Fund, a venture capital (VC) firm that mainly invests in seed-stage internet and mobile startups in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Joining KK Fund is a former senior executive in Singapore’s Parkway Healthcare Group, Dr Goh Jin Hian.

Med247 co-founder Tuan Truong explained to e27 that the funding will be used to focus on launching Med247’s physical clinics, and further develop its clinics’ management platform.

It also plans to scale up to more locations to widen users reach.

Koichi Saito, KK Fund’s founding partner stated that the investment in Med247 is a “no brainer.”

“Med247 is one of the very few pre-launched startups KK Fund has invested in. I was amazed by the business concept and the founders involved, especially because one of the co-founders, Dr Phong, is a practising doctor,” said Saito.

Also Read: Hanoi TOP100 winner shows the best Vietnam has to offer

“The founder also got a doctor network and a following of more than 16,000 young parents that will greatly contribute to the growth of Med247,” Saito noted.

Med247 Clinics was founded by Tuan Truong with Bobby Liu and Dr Phong, in hopes to help improving healthcare delivery in fast-growing Vietnam.

Commenting on the investment, Truong said that KK Fund shared Med247 vision.

“KK Fund’s deep understanding of the Japanese healthcare system is a huge plus, and along with Dr Goh’s experience in leading Parkway’s primary care clinics and hospitals, we have significant advantages when scaling Med247,” he emphasised.

Healthcare in Vietnam

According to KPMG, Vietnam’s healthcare spending is estimated to increase from US$16.1 Billion in 2017 to almost US$20 Billion in 2020. Even with the numbers telling so, according to a 2016 report by the World Bank, Vietnam has only 72 doctors per 100,000 citizens, compared to Singapore’s 230.

About 80 per cent of Vietnam’s primary care clinics are situated in homes and waiting time for medical consultation at hospitals is nearly an hour at best, which leaves the country in dire need of basic healthcare delivery.

At the other hand, Vietnam is also experiencing four times increase of per capita GDP in 10 years, making the foray into healthtech even more timely for the startups.

Also Read: A sneak peek into healthtech startups operating in Vietnam

“The medical practice in Vietnam follows the traditional model where it’s doctor and hospital-centric. We want to reimagine healthcare whereby it becomes patient-centric, empowering our patients with our technology platform, helping them to always be connected with our medical professionals,” Truong explained.

Med247 clinics have four specialities offered under one roof, with each clinic specially designed to be “spacious, comfortable, and efficient”. It also ensures that it is insurance companies-compliant on the backend.

Med247 also has an app available for patients to make appointments on-site which help cut down waiting time, facilitate online consultation, medical records and lab results access, and later on, facilitate e-prescriptions, all on the app.

When being asked about what makes Med247 ahead of its competition, Truong explained that Med247 has a strong clinic management system optimised with best practices for treatments.

“Having an experienced doctor as a co-founder, we are able to build the SOP, or Standard Operating Procedures, that put us ahead of the game and enhance our ability to scale. We focus on both online to offline and offline to online conversions at the early stages in order to create a seamless experience for our customers,” said Truong.

–

Image Credit: Med247

The post Vietnamese healthcare startup Med247 gets seed funding from KK Fund, broadens users coverage appeared first on e27.