DailySocial: Medigo Announces Pre-Series A Funding, Plan Expansion to the Clinic Supply Chain

DailySocial.id – Startup healthtech Medigo announced its funding of pre-series A with an undisclosed value. There are three investors involved in the new funding this round, namely the existing Venturra Discovery and two new investors: Golden Gate Ventures and Kenangan Kapital which is an angel fund owned by Kopi Kenangan Co-founder Edward Tirtanata.

In his interview with DailySocial, Medigo Co-founder and CEO Harya Bimo revealed that this new funding will support the company’s expansion plan to focus on becoming a provider of clinic supply chains in Indonesia.

“Previously, the clinic chain was one of Medigo’s initiatives to strengthen the healthcare ecosystem in Indonesia. Now we focus on being a clinic chain only. So, our revenue stream will later [mainly] from clinics, ”said the man who is familiarly called Bimo.

Contacted separately, Edward Tirtanata revealed his reasons for being involved as an angel investor in Medigo. He assessed that currently there is still a big gap in the Indonesian health industry. It is undeniable that clinics are still the main destination for Indonesians considering that the hospital costs are still expensive.

The standardization of clinics in Indonesia is currently still low, so not all people are able to get the same health care in every region. With the support of digital platforms, Indonesia can increase the standardization of its clinical ecosystem. With the support of digital platforms, Indonesia can increase the standardization of its clinical ecosystem.

“This is why this pivot can be a game changer. Not only for Medigo’s business, but also for Indonesia’s [health industry]. We made a small bet at the start, but now Medigo is showing promising results, even during the pandemic, “he said.

Want to change the face of Indonesia’s health industry

Currently, Medigo has partnered up with 73 clinics in 42 cities in Indonesia. According to Bimo, the number of partnerships will continue to be increased next year and will be followed by the presence of new services, such as telemedicine.

Klinik Pintar offers a solution through a profit sharing system with clinic owners. This collaboration takes the form of providing technology solutions to digitize business processes and services, standardization, and investment that can help clinic owners develop their business and increase value-based care. Two Klinik Pintar have been built by the end of 2019.

Medigo has started to fully focus on becoming the clinical supply chain since the beginning of 2019. This is because the initial approach through the hospital is considered difficult to accelerate. Initially, Medigo had a mission to connect the entire health ecosystem in Indonesia from upstream to downstream, from patients, medical personnel, clinics, hospitals, to laboratories.

In his journey, Medigo realized that the nature of the hospital industry is to have a long bureaucratic chain. Bimo admitted that it took him almost one year per hospital to carry out the implementation, such as platform integration and HR training.

According to him, this strategy is right because it touches more on the grassroots segment. In addition, the number of clinics in Indonesia is far more than that of hospitals. Data from the Ministry of Health per 2018 recorded that there were 2,813 hospitals in Indonesia, while there were 8,841 clinics and 9,993 health centers.

“When developing a clinic management system, more than 300 clinics registered on our platform. It’s just that the usage is still small. Here we start to do research into the clinic to find out what the problem is. Is technology the main problem or is there anything else that hasn’t been resolved? ” Bimo explained.

From this research, Medigo continued to prepare plans in July 2019. One of the realizations at that time was to build a Smart Clinic by collaborating with the Indonesian Doctors Association (IDI) in December 2019 to inaugurate it in February 2020.

Executing pivots during a pandemic

Before the pandemic, the Smart Clinic was divided into two cooperation models, namely building on their own or collaborating with existing clinics. For the second option, Medigo can manage all existing clinic operations. There are also those that are managed jointly with the clinic owner.

When the Covid-19 pandemic occurred, the third Smart Clinic planned to be built in March was hampered. This development requires face-to-face and ongoing monitoring, while the social distancing policy does not allow this plan to continue. Even though they have tried to provide a seamless experience to reduce interaction, people still tend to be reluctant to come to hospitals or clinics during a pandemic.

Medigo also decided to re-evaluate its pivot strategy considering the pandemic situation did not allow the startup which was founded in 2018 to continue with the Smart Clinic partnership model at that time.

“Initially, we thought [this pivot] should partner with several hundred physical clinics that can be managed by yourself. Due to this pandemic, we are trying to see what the real focus and values we want to aim for in the entire healthcare ecosystem. Well, we have strengths where not many have played in [the clinical supply chain], ”he explained.

Medigo finally carried out a repositioning strategy with two new business models, namely (1) continuing to build a physical clinic which would be 100 percent managed by Medigo and (2) increasing cooperation with existing clinics. He said his main focus was on the second model by expanding services rather than building a new physical clinic.

According to Bimo, the pivot with this new business model can be said to be effective. Even in this pandemic situation, the presence of digital communication platforms (Zoom, WhatsApp, Google Meet, and others) has greatly helped companies build trust with clinics throughout Indonesia.

Although it was down for several months, now Medigo’s business is gradually improving again. At its peak, last May, Medigo pocketed a service increase of up to four times compared to April. In fact, Bimo said that Medigo’s business has earned healthy margins every month until now.

Apart from that, it has also noted a significant increase in interactions on its platform. The interaction referred to is the connectedness of stakeholders in the health industry. Bimo admitted that this was his main KPI when Medigo was founded.

Currently, Medigo manages patient medical record data at its clinic partners. Of the 73 clinics he manages, per clinic alone can have 100 patients per day. Along with the increasing number of Medigo partners in the future, his party targets that interactivity in the Indonesian health ecosystem will be even higher.

“Now our pivot has validation and the business model is clear. We have a demand that we can answer, the numbers prove it. It remains how we carry out the vertical execution, such as clinical acquisitions and scale up of services, and horizontally, “added Bimo.

Currently, Medigo is focusing on expanding access to Covid-19 testing in clinics to all regions in Indonesia. Medigo is also conducting a proof of concept (POV) for teleconsultation of specialist doctor services.

“We realize that Covid-19 has an impact on mothers. They are afraid to go out to vaccinate their children because of this pandemic. We are worried that there will be a generation gap. Therefore, in the future we also want to become a distribution network for any vaccine. With clinical supply chain support, our ultimate goal is transparency and reduces monopoly potential. “

Source : https://dailysocial.id/post/medigo-pendanaan-baru-pivot-bisnis-rantai-suplai-klinik