Asia Partners leads $65.7m round of Singapore telehealth firm Doctor Anywhere

As Covid-19 swept the world, businesses have struggled with a shortage of funding and other financial challenges, which left them with little cash on hand to weather the slowdown caused by the pandemic. However, the ensuing chaos opened up a number of tech-driven opportunities in healthcare sector.

Photo credit: Doctor Anywhere

For mobile-first consumers in Southeast Asia, healthtech solutions are becoming a necessity. In the region’s six largest nations, public healthcare expenditure is expected to double to US$740 billion between 2017 and 2025, driven by strong growth in telehealth, digital therapeutics, diagnostics, remote patient monitoring, and analytics.

To get ahead in the heated healthcare space, Singapore-based Doctor Anywhere has ramped up its services to build a telehealth platform that can connect a user with a health professional from a pool of 2,800 doctors within 18 seconds.

Apart from providing diagnostic services, Doctor Anywhere also delivers purchased prescriptions and medical certificates to patients and provides home-based health screening and vaccinations.

The company said that it has served over 1.5 million users across Southeast Asia since its launch in 2017.

Doctor Anywhere’s omnichannel strategy rests on several pillars including its physical clinics; Adept Healthcare, a managed-care business that was bought in 2019; and DA Marketplace, which sells insurance plans as well as health-related products and services.

“We were the first to launch an online mental health service in Southeast Asia and we maintain to have the largest provider base of psychologists and counselors on our platform,” said Doctor Anywhere CEO Wai Mun Lim.

Doctor Anywhere operates in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. It has set aside certain funds to “grow organically” in Souutheast Asia, which may also involve the acquisition of certain assets, Lim told Tech in Asia.

Soaring investor demand

Today, Doctor Anywhere announced that it has raised US$65.7 million in its latest financing round led by Asia Partners. The company claims this is one of the largest private funding rounds raised by a healthtech firm in Southeast Asia.

Photo credit: Doctor Anywhere

Existing investors including EDBI, Square Peg, IHH Healthcare, Kamet Capital, and Pavilion Capital also took part in the round, taking the total funds raised by Doctor Anywhere to over US$103.3 million.