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Steven Millward · · 4 min readEx-Lazada exec gets $33m funding for healthcare startup Alodokter
Indonesia-based healthcare startup Alodokter today announced its biggest ever investment – US$33 million, more than double the total it previously raised since launching in 2014.
France-born Nathanael Faibis, Alodokter’s CEO and co-founder, tells Tech in Asia the startup focuses on four things: a trove of original medical advice content, bookings for hospitals and clinics, online consultations with doctors, and – its most recent addition – health insurance.
Photo credit: Online Marketing / Unsplash
The injection will mainly go into augmenting the company’s online booking and insurance offerings, which are its two fastest-growing segments, as well as its expansion efforts in Indonesia and Thailand, explains Faibis.
Sequis Life led the series C round, with Philips, Heritas Capital Management, Hera Capital, and Dayli Partners chipping in. Previous investors SoftBank Ventures and Golden Gate Ventures also contributed.
Avoiding bad advice
Based in Jakarta, Faibis started Alodokter as a health information portal after seeing more and more people search for medical advice online.
“What people were reading was of very poor quality back at that time. Because of that, people were making very bad decisions [about their own health],” he says.
“What really pushed us to create the company was when Suci [Arumsari], my co-founder, had a medical issue, where she had bad advice from medical professionals that could have led to serious issues,” the CEO reveals.
In contrast, he saw that there was a lot of reliable medical advice on the web in English and French.
L-R: Suci Arumsari, Nathanael Faibis / Photo credit: Alodokter
The startup later added more services as it sought to bring fairer access to quality medical consultations.
In 2016, it ventured into Thailand, where its business is currently limited to text-based content.
Insurance gambit
With the launch of a relatively new insurance product, Alodokter is banking on its brand name and the trust it has built up over the years to gain traction.
Life after Lazada
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The injection comes as it expands into insurance.
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