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Growth Islands: Regional Expansion with Doctor Anywhere

Growth Islands: Regional Expansion with Doctor Anywhere

Growth Islands: Regional Expansion with Doctor Anywhere masthead

Nick: You're listening to the Growth Islands Podcast, a show about what it takes for businesses to truly seize the opportunities that exist in diverse and exciting Southeast Asia, or SEA, as we like to call it. My name is Nick Nash. I'm one of the co-founders of Asia Partners, a growth equity firm focused on tech and tech-enabled businesses here in Southeast Asia.

Rovik: And I am Rovik from Singapore Economic Development Board, also known as the EDB, the lead government agency responsible for strategies that enhance Singapore's position as the global centre for business innovation and talents. In each episode, we have the unique opportunity to talk to a business leader in a fast-growing startup to understand how they are scaling their businesses in the region. We get to the heart of the issue and hear first-hand real stories that we hope will inspire you to similarly take the journey to capture growth in SEA.

Nick: Do give us a follow on whichever podcast platform you're listening on and feel free to reach out to either the EDB or Asia Partners to find out more.

Rovik: The theme of today's episode is regional expansion. With nearly 700 million people and counting, Southeast Asia is a market brimming with opportunities.

It is also an incredibly dynamic environment, home to diverse markets and consumers, as well as a rapidly shifting landscape.

To unlock value, businesses need to be ready to go beyond the borders of the headquarters and localise for each country.

But given the many complications involved in expanding regional operations, especially here in Southeast Asia, how do you know when it is time to scale beyond your first base?

Nick: Today is just going to be so much fun. We have with us, Lim Wai Mun, who is the founder, Chairman and CEO of Doctor Anywhere, and also a very close personal friend.

DA has recently clocked over one and a half million patients/clients served across Southeast Asia. Wai Mun got his start here in Singapore in 2015 but has very systematically and very thoughtfully expanded his business across Southeast Asia. [Doctor Anywhere] is in Thailand now, where he's number one in market share. He's in at least the top two or three in Vietnam, maybe better than that. He's in the Philippines, he's in Malaysia and the number of countries will keep growing over time.

He just finished raising an S$88M series C, which was one of the very largest private funding rounds ever raised by a healthtech company in Southeast Asia. Full disclosure, we're shareholders, too. We're big fans of what he's doing. Wai Mun, thank you for joining us today.

Wai Mun: Rovik and Nick, thank you for inviting me to this podcast.

Nick: Our pleasure.

Wai Mun: Really appreciate it. And very glad to be able to share how we have been along the entire journey.

 

 

[02’32”] - Why Doctor Anywhere Chose to Disrupt Healthcare

Nick: Tell us about the journey. There are so many small startups in Southeast Asia. You're one of the big ones. How did it all happen?

Wai Mun: So Nick, if you look across all major sectors in the world, healthcare is the second least disrupted industry. The least disrupted one being aviation. And if you look at why, the key reason is how regulated a certain industry is. So, obviously, aviation is really regulated and hence is the least disrupted.

Nick: And by the way, both are life and death industries. So there's at least…

Wai Mun: Until COVID -

Nick: Oh, until COVID, but both are ones where the perception is the stakes are so high that we must regulate.

Wai Mun: Exactly.

Nick: But you're making the argument very well – that the stakes can be high, but we can also deliver it really well.

Wai Mun: Yes. And what I'm also trying to say is that because it's the second least disrupted in the major industries, it doesn't take a lot to innovate.

Nick: Oh, that’s interesting. (chuckles)

Wai Mun: It doesn't take a lot to innovate. The bar is low in the sense you don't need super high tech stuff within the space, because – just an example, if you walk into any of the hospitals in Southeast Asia, even under the same branding, under the same company, I will tell you that the systems are not even connected.

You walk into the same brand name hospital A and B in the same country, they wouldn’t keep the same records there.

And what does it mean? You're not talking about deep learning, machine learning stuff in here. No …

Nick: You're talking about bringing a USB drive with you to every doctor. You can copy the stuff and give it to the next guy.

Wai Mun: Exactly. Or simply have everything on the cloud and just connecting the dots there. So then for us it’s like, ‘Hey, hold on.’ Right before we go into this sexy… why don't we just be humble, be very grounded and say, ‘Let's solve the basic problem first.’ Going back to connectivity, accessibility, and affordability, because we optimise resources.

Nick: Consistency.

Wai Mun: Exactly, and provide that quality service to our users. And that's pretty, in my opinion, awesome for a stage one. And I think that's exactly what we have been trying to do for the space.

Doctor Anywhere, one of our first products, our core product, to deliver healthcare to our users through a video call is not new. Technically, you could do a WhatsApp call.

But what we have done is that – okay, we have the video call, we have the payment system, we have that electronic healthcare record system, ability to have our doctors prescribe and store the health records of our users.

And ultimately we then also put in that logistic function to deliver the medication, which by the way, none of those is new, sexy stuff in the market.

Nick: But putting them together was new.

Wai Mun: Exactly. Trying to see things from what a customer needs at a very basic level and work your way back and say, Hey yes, we'll get to that part about AI, about ML later on, but let's get this focus sorted out first with data, with insight into our customers. Then I think all those AL/ML stuff when they come in, it makes so much sense.

 

 

[05’31”] - Three Important Body Parts of a Good Founder

I would say that when we look back, we have really come a long way. But when we look forward, obviously, we find that we are probably still at the beginning of what we're trying to achieve.

When I distil everything into what it has been, I do realise that there is a certain truth to getting a lot of this growth to be unselfishly on the founder.

And beyond a certain point, the founders really need to have three things, that are part of our body – the mouth, the heart and the gut.

Nick: Is that a medical diagnosis? [Chuckles]

Wai Mun: Related to Doctor Anywhere, yes!

Nick: Because you have specialist clinics in these three areas as I understand it. [Chuckles]

Wai Mun: So, let me get to it, right?

The mouth really is the ability to express what we're trying to do – to convince people, to convince investors, to convince our customers, to convince our B2B corporate partners, to convince our own employees to join us… good people.

The heart is where we take empathy into people that we deal with - when we hire; when we bring more talent on board. Let's talk about talent. Talent – they don't just look for money or monetary rewards that way. It's beyond that. Many a time they look at the founder, they look at the leaders and only if you have amassed yourself a good team, more talent will want to join you. Talent attracts talent. And with empathy from a founder, you tend to also attract a different group of people to join you. And then, that's a very scalable way of expanding a company.

And gut is really about the gut feel about certain things. The ability for us to be able to have a good feeling about certain things or bad feelings and say, Hey, stay out of it, or let's try to do something. Many a time, it's really not about that thought process. Sometimes I do feel that if you think too much, you might not be able to do it.

And bear in mind that I've never once mentioned brain, because (as) an entrepreneur, a founder, you cannot have too much brain in it. You need to have these three things. Your mouth, your heart, and your gut. And when you attract the talent, they will be your brain.

When DA was first started, absolutely nobody believed in it. I remember when we went live in August 2017, everyone was like,

Wai Mun, just go back to Temasek. Don't do this. This is one of the most stupid ideas, right? Because you look at all the community, you have so many GP clinics around. What are you trying to do? It will not work. People would just come down to see me at my clinic.

And to me, what I felt back then was that – logically they are correct, logically. But my gut feel is that, if he's correct, then if I were to link it to your FoodPanda, so on and so forth, why would those work?

Rovik: Yeah, because there are hawker centres everywhere.

Wai Mun: Exactly. And they work also within that one to two kilometres away from their home, the radius.

Nick: Well, Wai Mun, logically in 1910, people wanted faster horses that didn't go to the bathroom in the streets. Logically.

Wai Mun: Exactly! (chuckles) And when you think about most – I wouldn't say it's innovation, because what we're doing here exactly is not a rocket science. We are selling a different thing altogether. We are selling convenience. We are selling time–back to people in an urban setting.

So, I started to feel that, Hey, maybe time is what they're looking for.

And that was my gut feel. And really against so many good advice and really well-meaning advice from friends, from family, I just said, maybe there's an opportunity here.

And then the team got started, we were happy with whoever joined us, and fast forward, all was ok at the start… to the point when we were trying to scale up.

 

 

[08’55”] - Approaching the Vast Diversity of the SEA Market

Rovik: That's super interesting. And I wanna dig deeper into that. A lot of companies, when they start up, they think of their domestic market a lot. And I know, in Singapore, you can never just think domestic. You have to think regionally. So, for Doctor Anywhere, did you always know that you were going to be a regional company? And either way, what was your game plan to achieve growth?

Wai Mun: When we first started off, we are still a small company with big ambition. Singapore will forever be our test market. And, to be honest, to a good extent, is still a key market for us, because it is a market that’s small but profitable.

But when you find volume, it will really be coming out from other parts of Southeast Asia. The key challenge here is about how, although we are all geographically close to each other, the regulations, the people, the language, the culture – they're all just different.

Especially in health care, it is even more pronounced. Give you an example, in Singapore, we are used to the GP clinics as a primary care function. But you don't find the same type of functions in Vietnam, in Thailand, to a good extent in the Philippines as well.

Why? Because the primary source of primary care for them would be the pharmacy and not GP clinics.

And when we look at that, you don't want to end up trying to change user behaviour. Because that is a very expensive exercise and the investors might not like it, and neither do we like it.

Because we have seen how bigger companies have tried to change user behaviour in the transport industry, for example, you need billions of dollars to do that.

Nick: Well, there’s just so much accumulated trust that's been built up with the local pharmacist, and why destroy that when you can somehow…

Wai Mun: Enhance it.

Nick: Enhance it.

Wai Mun: Yes, exactly. And that's why we then think about the model of trying to enhance user experience and to go with it. Look, you don't need to always try to reverse what that industry is, but how do we make it better? Especially in a very technical space like healthcare. And that is where I think it's very challenging because in every country it’s different.

 

 

[10’57”] - Replicating Success Across Markets

Wai Mun: And when we look at how do we then repeat the same success that we have achieved so far in Singapore, to a good extent, into all these different countries,... having a common platform is that –

First, we look at hiring local talent – bringing the local team in, across all our offices in Southeast Asia. We have one in Hanoi, two in Ho Chi Min, one in KL, one in Bangkok and one in Manila. We do not have that expat mentality. Nobody is above my local GM who is a local.

So, we all work together as a team. They know exactly what's required on the ground and they tell us what they need and what we need to tweak to our existing platform, and we do that.

So far, that has worked well for us. We find that with this model, we are now even able to scale much easier because with a local leader that is a local, you have a lot more credibility as a firm on the ground.

Nick: Totally. It's so much more authentic. Let's double click on this for a bit, because this is an interesting topic. When we were building Shopee at Sea Ltd., and ditto when we were building Garena, we always thought about it as like the old days of those MP3 players – the old ones from 20 years ago? You could download a skin, and you could change the look and feel of your MP3 player.

And we said, look, we have a core technology stack, but each local market will have a downloadable skin, so that it comes across as very local and authentic.

And then we realised that even wasn't the right analogy, even though skin is the largest organ in the body, but we had to have a lot of interesting local customization, and almost got to the point where each of our countries were wholly-owned franchise operations of a technology recipe that Singapore built.

How have you thought about that in your business? The right balance of “centralise, standardise, keep it efficient” versus “let's put a bunch of [other] people into business”? Technically they're your employees, but you want them to think like business owners.

 

 

[12’53”] - Balancing Standardisation and Localisation

Wai Mun: Time and space, time and space right now. In the beginning of a business, you can expect to do full-on into really having everything customisable and localised in a sense, as a step in, as the most efficient way of doing it.

As leaders, we always think about low-hanging fruit stuff, right? So we, again, not trying to really be Einstein here. We don't have to reinvent certain things.

Just go in, ask ourselves with our existing platform, what can we do with it, and we go with those first. Establish a presence and then, with the local team, with the advice that they feedback to us in Singapore – our engineers…so on and so forth, we then start to move it in the model whereby we fully localise it.

But, you cannot just go in gung-ho about things and say, Hey, that's what I want to do. Because, when that happens, everything will be in flux and at a certain stage, we are just not ready for it.

 

[13’45”] - Getting Authentic Customer Insights Into Each Market

Rovik: So I guess there are a couple of areas in market entry that I think everyone would be thinking about. The first is, really, how do you get authentic and relevant customer insights in that part of the country or the city that you're operating in, in a way that it's actually meaningful for your platform? Because I think a lot of people, they worry that – if I go in, maybe the market's not mature enough, maybe they don't understand we can be of value, how do you navigate that?

Wai Mun: It's really having conversations with your own team. It’s really also going down to survey, talk to your clients, your consumers on a regular basis, fine tune your model.

What we also find very interesting is that sometimes consumers might not know what they want. So, when we try to launch something in a more pilot manner, we would then try to learn from it and finesse the model again, and that whole iteration would keep happening, to the point whereby we see that – Hey, this is what the consumer really wants – and then we keep doubling down on the one item.

Rovik: And you mentioned when consumers highlight problems, you see that as opportunities for you to build on your product?

Wai Mun: If I were to put on my previous investor hat, I would see Southeast Asia as a region that is difficult to invest in.

Why? Because from the outside in, you can never understand – you are potentially investing into eight companies, nine companies – sorry, countries.

And that to me, it's a whole lot of diligence to be done. Do I really want to get into that mess or do I want to just go to China or India or the US, where you have a more uniform market?

And I can see that as a lot of complaints in a sense, and obviously, as an entrepreneur, we forever have that optimistic half-full mentality, which is that – if these are all complaints, it's also where we find opportunity. Whoever can first break that code, get to the holy grail, will win the game.

Especially in healthcare, if you look at healthcare, healthtech especially – and I can probably speak for that sector because I'm very much involved in it – there are a few companies that have been here, the same category as us, but haven't really found a way as well around in Southeast Asia.

You're talking about a very big Chinese company. You're talking about one of the leading, largest telehealth companies based in the US as well. They've been here. They're still sticking around. But have they found much success?

I think there is a lot of navigation to be done because it's just a very fragmented market, but at the same time, if we can find a solution to tie everything with a base platform, I think there are a lot of opportunities in it.

And how do we do it – really is to find a common point with all these customers that we have across the region, starting with Singapore.

 

 

[16’23”] - Why Singapore is a Gateway to the Region

Wai Mun: The truth is that Singapore, as a country, we are the gateway to the whole region. A lot of companies will station themselves here, headquarter here, and then they get their employees to work out of Singapore into other parts of Southeast Asia. And I still think that it's a very viable option in that sense…

Rovik: Yeah, is that because of like access and convenience?

Wai Mun: I think Singapore is extremely friendly to foreigners. In Singapore, you can just start a company tomorrow. In fact, today, if you want it, right now you just go on to ACRA, you can register a company already

But in other countries, you might take three months, six months, sometimes 12 months to register a company. So that ease, that convenience, the infrastructure, the friendliness at the end of it, I think that is where I still think Singapore would be the gateway to Southeast Asia.

I think as we discussed early on, the only downside to Singapore is that in terms of the absolute number of people staying here – population-wise, it's still considered a small market.

But hey, Singapore is one of the most, I would say, high-spending developed countries in Southeast Asia and it's factual. And if you cannot even convince a developed market to consume your product – something to think about

 

 

[17’44”] - Market Entry Modes

Rovik: So another area I'm really interested in is how you decided the mode in which you entered some of these countries. When people think about regional expansion, there are a couple of ways. You can do acquisition of existing companies, you can do JVs, you can do like completely go in and see the team.

What were some of the considerations you made around how Doctor Anywhere should do it? And how did you land at the model that you ended up with?

Wai Mun: Because outside of Singapore and Southeast Asia, a lot of these markets can be quite inward-looking. To navigate easier within the country, you probably might want to consider having a local partner in that sense. But again, it also depends on what you're trying to achieve.

In certain markets, you really don't have to. But for some of the key markets that we go into, we do find that having that leverage on our partner as a start is something that can be very helpful.

One of the key markets, for example, for us, is the Philippines; our local partner being Equicom. Equicom is the owner of the largest health maintenance organisation in the Philippines called Maxicare.

And when we work with then-Maxicare to provide that connected health care to their own users, the access to their customers that is untapped when we first went in – that was tremendous results for us. We have grown 10, 20 times our size just within a period of a few months.

And when we take many steps back to look at, Hey, why did that happen? – it's really because we found ourselves a very credible local partner to work with, and eventually that gave us the access, that gave us the opportunity to grow. And it's not impossible; it's just that it takes a longer time to grind.

 

 

[19’19”] - Securing the In-Market Partner

Rovik: One of the things that we hear is that maybe some of these players in other markets, don't really want to work with tech startups because they're sceptical, or maybe they don't trust players from outside of the locality. So how did you offer value and prove that you can be that enabler and partner?

Wai Mun: I think one of the few things that Equicom was, for example, when they were looking at potentially partnering us, they were also looking at our investors. Who are the guys backing you?

And back then, when we first started the conversation, EDBI, who is our series B investor, they represent the Government of Singapore. And having that backing was a much easier conversation to start off with.

Oh, so the government is backing Doctor Anywhere. Okay, something's brewing, right? I'm not sure what, but something's brewing… And with that gut feel, I'll try to start a conversation with you.

Because it's not easy, Rovik, you’re right. To first have that first touchpoint and say “Here, work with me” – and for them, it's a lot to lose; for me, it's nothing to lose. And how do we marry it to come in between is something that I think a lot to consider for them.

Again, not advertisement here, right – when we first showed them the list of people coming in, Philips as well and some of these more familiar healthcare names, and Asia partner being literally Asia, that helped a lot! People who understand locals, people who understand what's going on, and for them it was another tick off the box.

So, to me, that is already a very good testament, at least for companies. You are right to say that they look for a few checkboxes, but I think all this plays into them coming to the decision point to say, Okay, let me work with you.

And that ultimately becomes the gift that keeps on giving, because by the time Doctor Anywhere is a multi-billion dollar company, then actually magnetically opportunities will be coming – to Wai Mun. But right now, when Wai Mun is going out there and saying, Hey, I'd love to work with you, that little credibility score, it's almost like a little augmented reality score in the upper right of the screen for everybody...

Wai Mun: Yeah.

Nick: Slowly inching upwards. Super important.

Wai Mun: Yeah, absolutely. It's about finding more supporters for you from many different sources, not just being your investor.

Nick: Oh no, everything.

Wai Mun: Yeah, everything. Even your customers can be your supporter.

 

 

[21’49”] - Customer Acquisition Across Markets

Rovik: So the last area in my mind that I was really interested to double-click on was customer acquisition. So, do you consider yourselves primarily B2C or do you have a B2B sort of component as well?

Wai Mun: B2B2C. Or B2C. At the heart of the company. it's always about the customers.

Rovik: So because you've done the customer needs analysis, really, at a local level, I guess you also need to employ different ways to acquire customers, right? Whether it's digital marketing, whether it's working through the partners, how have you thought about thinking differently about customer acquisition and maybe building that capability, whether centralised or decentralised?

Wai Mun: This is a very deep topic for us, even as we're talking right now. Maybe let me describe it from our perspective, right?

Rovik: Yes, please. Rovik: When we look at either B2B or B2C, like I said, the customer is always our core focus. We just look at that initial relationship that reaches out like a funnel.

So if it's B2B, we work with insurance brokers and we work with corporates directly. We work with banks so on and so forth to reach out to customers. So that's one engine for us.

And then the other engine would be your usual Google Adwords, SEO, SEM so on and so forth …

Rovik: Digital marketing.

Wai Mun: Digital marketing, yes, so we broadly understand that in every country that we are in, we always have these two funnel engines running. Then the key question here is that –

Okay. We know that's what we want, but how do we do it? Is it a localised manner, or is it more of a centralised manner?

So what we find at this point in time, more logical and low-hanging fruit, for us, would be to localise B2B, because it's a local relationship that you can’t just handle from Singapore.

Rovik: For sure.

Nick: It involves enterprise selling at the end of the day.

Wai Mun: As well, that's correct. And most importantly, that kind of culture, having somebody who can speak Thai in Thailand, is just different from having this guy who speaks Singlish in Thailand.

Nick: And Google Adwords doesn't [directly] help you with B2B selling, [in that you need a person-to-person selling effort].

Wai Mun: But having that whole Google ad, that whole SEM/SEO, we find that it's possible for us to kind of centralise.

Nick: Especially for the B2C side of your business.

Wai Mun: Exactly, but having said that, we also realise, and we learned this really for a few years already, that although you can centralise a certain function, you still want to localise it to a good extent, by having a local person in that office, to link up with your centralised resources in HQ, to say that, Hey, yes, I understand what you’re trying to achieve, but this is not the right way to talk to the locals here.

Nick: Very right.

Rovik: So localising the language, the visuals…

Nick: It’s actually 10 levels beyond that. Anybody can translate. But it's deeper than that.

Wai Mun: Exactly, it’s deeper than that.

For example, initially, when we were in Thailand, we were just trying to blast out GP services.

It doesn't help because, like I mentioned much earlier on, the primary care there happens at the pharmacy. Nobody really goes to GP.

So you can translate and really have very nice pictures. But if there is not the local way, the culture of accessing healthcare, it doesn't matter what you say.

And hence the ability to understand that part and also to translate the material and say that, GP probably is still what we want to sell, but these are the few things that you can look out to a GP for and this is probably an upgrade from a pharmacist, so on and so forth.

Then you can attract the attention of your consumer, and, Oh, interesting. Then they will start to use you.

 

 

[24’57”] - Tackling Mental Health

Nick: I know we have limited time left, Wai Mun, but I just want to highlight two last things.

One is I just want to pay you an enormous compliment, which is as much as you've been building a business geared around growth and shareholder value, part of how you've done that is you've chosen to make a big part of your business an area of healthcare that has not just been underserved – it's arguably been stigmatised for all the wrong reasons, which is mental health.

And I can't think of a single better use case for traditional telemedicine than being able to talk to someone [remotely]. And COVID has been a time of enormous stress, to add to the everyday stresses that we all go through. So, I just wanted to pay you an enormous compliment for making these kinds of services available.

And I was wondering if you could share with all of us and our listeners, what is the future of mental health using technology, and how do we further embrace this as a true therapeutic area where people can really get help to lead more fulfilling lives?

Wai Mun: In my opinion, looking at user behaviour in this part of the world, I still do not think that our people here understand what mental wellness is. You can have all the infrastructure you want. But I still don't think people understand what it is and know how to fully make use of it.

A lot of Southeast Asians, because it's all in our culture that we tend to keep a lot of things to ourselves.

Nick: We're overly stoic.

Wai Mun: Exactly, somehow or rather, that ego within us will never allow us to admit that something is wrong with us, be it in the shower room or not.

And when we go into talking with the HR of companies, and we believe that that is probably the right way to do it – through B2B. Why? Because B2C people will still question – Wait, why am I paying $100 to talk to somebody when I can just talk to my wife, or my husband, or my friends?

So people still will not see the value. But when you approach it from a different manner to say – Hey, this is a benefit. It's free for you. Go get it.

But even then, it's not good enough, because people still don't know. So, let's move one step back and say, Hey, why don't, as a company, you use our diagnostic tools?

And then, as a tool, we would then go back to your company and say, Hey, this is what your employee is feeling right now.

And, by the way, that's something that we've done with Carsome.

Nick: They did this great Mental Health Wellness Month [initiative], and you've been a part [of it].

Wai Mun: Exactly. So we did like this whole org-wide diagnostics for them and we gave them some insight into what their employees could be feeling so on and so forth.

And eventually, when we conduct that mental wellness talk, it's relevant.

It's a little bit like if you have cough, cold, flu, and everyday I'm just telling you about diabetes and hypertension, you’d look at me and you be like, Why are you telling me this? I just have a cough, cold, flu.

And the same for mental wellness, because you want to make sure that you are really connecting with the user at a very personalised level. And that's when they will listen.

If they listen, then you have a good chance of getting them to understand that they need help, and when they know that they need help, then they will start to utilise all the tools.

Rovik: Yeah, that's really encouraging. I'm a big proponent and believer in the need for mental wellness and more conversations around like how we can access mental wellness support and so on. This is really exciting stuff, and I'm glad that Doctor Anywhere is making strides in educating and helping organisations and people.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. I learned a lot and I'm sure all our listeners are going to be learning a lot, and I am excited for the future of Doctor Anywhere. I hope to see you guys in more markets and doing greater things.

I guess I should have admitted that I’m a big user of it as well.

Wai Mun: Thank you! (chuckles)

Rovik: So, very cool to be able to talk to you as well. So thank you.

Wai Mun: Thank you so much, Rovik.

Nick: I’m incredibly proud of what you've done, Wai Mun. You've put Singapore on the map from a healthcare perspective in the next generation and like, back to the mental health conversation, you've done so much good. You're really saving lives. I’m so proud of you.

Wai Mun: Thank you so much. And, personally, I do hope that – it can be Doctor Anywhere, it can be any healthtech company – but I would want to just end off by saying that, there are just abundance of opportunities within Southeast Asia. For anyone looking from outside in, it's not complicated if you work with people on the inside.

Rovik: Yep. I think that's definitely a great lesson.

Thanks again for tuning into growth islands for more great content and resources on expanding your team in Southeast Asia, check out a growth islands micro-site and the podcast description link. We'll see you in the next episode!

Southeast Asia is a market of 700 million consumers, but how should a business think about expansion amid the region’s diverse markets and consumers?

In this episode, Lim Wai Mun, CEO, DoctorAnywhere takes us through the anatomy of a successful regional expansion. Learn about how localising customer needs and company teams helped DoctorAnywhere to expand credibly across diverse markets. Discover how choosing the right partners and funnel strategy enabled the team to drive an effective customer acquisition approach, and ultimately build a credible model for the future of healthcare in the region. 

 

Meet our guest:
Lim Wai Mun, Founder and CEO, Doctor Anywhere
 

lim wai mun

Wai Mun is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Doctor Anywhere, with more than 10 years of experience in the investment and start-up space.

Before Doctor Anywhere, Wai Mun spent 3 years in private equity, before devoting close to a decade to Temasek Holdings. He was instrumental in the conceptualisation and establishment of Pavilion Energy, a Singapore-based LNG company with significant stakes in the global energy market. The experience at Pavilion Energy equipped him with the essential insights and acumen to lead a team through the complexities of the healthcare landscape.

Born and raised in Singapore, Wai Mun graduated with a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering at National University of Singapore.

 

 

About Doctor Anywhere

 

Doctoranywhere

Launched in 2017, Doctor Anywhere is a regional tech-led healthcare company that harnesses the power of technology and connectivity, to combine a holistic range of health and wellness services into a single, integrated platform.

Doctor Anywhere’s mission is to bridge efficiency gaps in the health and wellness ecosystem, to bring a seamless and convenient healthcare experience to millions in the region.

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