Medigo Announces Pre Series A Funding, Plans Expansion to Clinic Supply Chain

Startups healthtech Medigo announced the acquisition of pre-series A funding for an undisclosed amount. There are three investors involved in the new funding this time, namely investors Existing Venturra Discovery and two new investors: Golden Gate Ventures and Capital Memories which is angel funds 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 plans to focus on becoming a clinic supply chain provider (clinic chains) in Indonesia.

"Before clinic chains is one of Medigo's initiatives to strengthen the ecosystem healthcare in Indonesia. Now we focus on being clinic chains saja. So, revenue streams we later [Mainly] from the clinic," said the man who is familiarly called Bimo.

Contacted separately, Edward Tirtanata revealed his reasons for being involved as angel investors at Medigo. He judged that at this time there were still gap in the Indonesian healthcare industry. It is undeniable that clinics are still the main destination for Indonesian people considering that hospital costs are still expensive.

Currently, clinical standardization in Indonesia is still low, so that not all people are able to obtain the same health care in every region. With the support of a digital platform, Indonesia can improve the standardization of its clinical ecosystem.

"This is why pivot this can be game changer. Not only for the Medigo business, but also for the Indonesian [health industry]. We bet at the beginning with a small amount, but now Medigo is showing promising results, even during the pandemic," he said.

Want to change the face of the Indonesian healthcare industry

Currently, Medigo has partnered 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.

Smart Clinic offer solutions through a profit sharing system with clinic owners. This collaboration is in the form of providing technology solutions to digitize business processes and services, standardization, and investment that can help clinic owners develop their businesses and improve their business. value-based care. Two Smart Clinics have been built by the end of 2019.

Medigo has started to focus on becoming a clinical supply chain since early 2019. This is because the initial approach through hospitals 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 staff, clinics, hospitals, to laboratories.

Apparently on his way, Medigo realized that nature of the hospital industry is to have a long bureaucratic chain. Bimo admitted that it took almost one year per hospital to implement, such as platform integration and implementation training HR.

According to him, this strategy is right because it touches more segments grassroots. In addition, the number of clinics in Indonesia is far more than hospitals. Data from the Ministry of Health as of 2018 recorded that there were 2.813 hospitals in Indonesia, while clinics reached 8.841 and puskesmas 9.993 units.

"While developing clinic management system, more than 300 clinics register on our platform. It is just usageit's still small. Here we started researching the clinic to find out what the problem was. Is technology the main problem or is there something else that has not been resolved?” Bimo explained.

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

Execute pivot during the pandemic

Before the pandemic, the Smart Clinic was divided into two models of collaboration, namely building their own or collaborating with clinics Existing. For the second option, Medigo can manage all clinic operations Existing. Some are managed jointly with the clinic owner.

When the Covid-19 pandemic occurred, the third Smart Clinic, which was planned to be built in March, was hampered. This development requires face-to-face and monitoring sustainable, while the social restriction policy does not allow this plan to continue. Even though they have tried to give 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 the strategy pivot-This is because the pandemic situation does not allow the startup that was founded in 2018 to continue the model partnerships Smart Clinic at that time.

"At first, we thought [pivot this] must cooperate with hundreds of physical clinics that can be managed by themselves. Due to this pandemic, we are trying to see what the focus is and value what we want to aim for from the whole ecosystem healthcare. Well, we have strength where not many are playing in [clinic supply chain]," he explained.

Medigo finally did repositioning strategy with two new business models, namely: (1) continue to build a physical clinic that will be 100 percent managed by Medigo and (2) increase collaboration with clinics Existing. He said his main focus was on the second model by expanding services rather than building new physical clinics.

According to Bimo, 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) really helps companies build trust with clinics throughout Indonesia.

Although it had been down for several months, now Medigo's business is gradually increasing again. At its peak, last May, Medigo pocketed a four-fold increase in services compared to April. In fact, Bimo said that Medigo's business had already made a profit margin healthy every month until now.

In addition, it also noted a significant increase in interactions on its platform. The interaction in question is the connectedness of the stakeholder in the healthcare industry. Bimo admitted that this was his main KPI when Medigo was founded.

Currently, Medigo manages patient medical record data at its clinical partners. Of the 73 clinics he manages, per clinic alone can have 100 patients per day. As the number of Medigo partners increases in the future, it targets interactive in Indonesia's health ecosystem will be higher.

"Now pivot we already have validation and the business model is clear. We have demand which we can answer the numbers prove it. It's just a matter of how we execute verticals, such as clinic acquisitions and scale up services, and horizontally," added Bimo.

Currently, Medigo is focusing on expanding access to Covid-19 tests at clinics to all regions in Indonesia. They are also doing proof of concept (POV) for specialist doctor service teleconsultation.

"We realize that Covid-19 has an impact on mothers. They don't dare to go out for their children's vaccines because of this pandemic. We are worried that there will be generation gap. Therefore, in the future we also want to be a distribution network for any vaccine. With the support of the clinic's supply chain, our ultimate goal is transparency and reducing the potential for monopolies."