Healthcare site Alodokter raises $2.5m from Golden Gate Ventures

Alodokter team.

Indonesian health information portal Alodokter today announced that it has raised a US$2.5 million series A round led by Golden Gate Ventures.

500 Startups and Singaporean entrepreneur Lim Dershing also participated. All three had invested in the seed round.

Nathanael Faibis, founder and CEO of Alodokter, says the funds are intended for regional expansion.

Alodokter offers articles on health, wellness, and family topics. Founded in July 2014, the startup claims it’s now the leading health information website in Indonesia with 8 million unique monthly visitors. A quick check on Similarweb shows that local competitors like Dokter.id, Halodoc, MeetDoctor, KlikDokter, and 1Health are indeed left in the dust in terms of pageviews.

It now gets 1,000 patient questions each day.

Alodokter also lets readers submit questions and chat with doctors for free. Over 100,000 patient questions have been answered to date.

The feature doesn’t get patients a diagnosis or a prescription, but it offers a quick yet comprehensive answer about basic health questions and what to do next in terms of treatment or prevention when they suffer mild symptoms.

There’s a strong demand from users for this, Nathaniel says. “Our objective is to give to our users the right information they need to take the right decision for their health.”

Alodokter launched an Android app in March this year which focuses on the chat function.

Alodokter now receives 1,000 patient questions daily, which are tackled manually. There are plans to respond to them “with a mix of AI and real doctor interaction.”

The main source of revenue for Alodokter are ads related to medical topics. Advertisers are brands such as insurance firms, health appliance makers, hospitals, and nutrition companies.

There’s no immediate plan to monetize the chat function.