When Lim Wai Mun pitched the idea for a telemedicine platform years ago, practising doctors told him it would not work. Lim, a mechanical engineer by training, could have taken their word for it and pulled the plug right there.
“I can see why people would think it wouldn’t work. Why should it, when clinics were well-integrated into the community? Walk around where people are staying and you should be able to find plenty,” he says.
Lim believed consumers in the healthcare industry — that is, patients — did not have the best experience visiting the doctor. “I asked myself as a consumer: ‘What do I want?’ Then we reverse-engineered into what it means for doctors, and eventually the payer, or insurer.”
Lim launched the telehealth company in 2017 to connect “care-seekers” to healthcare providers through video-calls via mobile phone.
Eventually, Lim was proven right. When Covid-19 hit, Doctor Anywhere was the first company in Singapore to launch online-supervised antigen rapid testing (ART), which was opened to the public in January 2020. As of August 2022, Doctor Anywhere has recorded close to 100,000 tele-ART transactions.
“After Covid-19, the three parties — patient, provider and payer — changed their mindsets,” Lim tells The Edge Singapore. “Patients realised it’s safer not to be exposed to viruses at the clinic, and doctors felt the same. Conversations with the payer, or insurer, also changed. It used to be: ‘Okay, this is something innovative.’ But now, it’s almost weird if you don’t cover telemedicine services. There was demand both ways, and the motivations have changed or evolved in a way.”
Last August, Doctor Anywhere closed its $88 million Series C funding round, led by growth equity investor Asia Partners. The round also attracted investors Novo Holdings, Philips and OSK-SBI Venture Partners. Existing investors also participated in the round, including Singapore-based global investor EDBI, Square Peg, IHH Healthcare, Kamet Capital and Pavilion Capital.
The round brought the total capital raised by Doctor Anywhere above $140 million, and Lim targets to break-even by the end of 2023.
See also: Doctor Anywhere makes 18.8 cents per share offer for Asian Healthcare Specialists
Today, Doctor Anywhere counts 2.5 million users and more than 600 employees across six countries; the company also operates in Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.
For his company’s success, Lim has been named EY Entrepreneur of the Year for Healthcare Services.
Despite the accolades, Lim stops short of marketing Doctor Anywhere as a “revolutionary” solution.
The healthcare space is the second-least disrupted space in the world, the least being aviation, because that is even more regulated than healthcare… Until the day when the doctor can reach through a phone to touch you, I don’t think digital healthcare will be able to replace traditional, brick-and-mortar healthcare.
Omnichannel approach
Doctor Anywhere’s elevator pitch promises a video consultation with a Singapore-licensed doctor within five minutes of waiting. Medication will then be delivered to patients within three hours. Should patients require further examination, doctors may advise them to visit one of Doctor Anywhere’s nine physical clinics across the island.
According to Lim, the company’s online-to-offline model not only shortens the wait-time for patients, but also lets its 110 general practitioners (GPs) earn more income. “We have doctors who are doing this on a full-time basis, and some of the top earners on our platform make $30,000 to $40,000 a month, compared to a GP in a clinic getting paid about $13,000 a month. It’s a big difference.”
How is this possible? Full-time doctors on Lim’s platform focus on seeing patients, he says, without worrying about rental costs, administrative tasks and inventory. “They can focus on delivering healthcare; that’s what they’re good at. How do we use tech to help them see 10 to 15 patients an hour, instead of four to five? Doctors are now able to maximise their time,” he adds.
The omnichannel approach also flows the other way, allowing doctors to schedule virtual check-ups following physical consultations. All these grew out of Doctor Anywhere’s focus on patient preferences, says Lim. “The healthcare space is very reactive… We see a lot of unmet demand for personalised, borderless and inclusive healthcare.”
The days of “Softbank-style” disruption, where investors pour large amounts of money to change user behaviour, are over, says Lim. “If we don’t have the crazy capital to bulldoze through a sector to change user behaviour, what I think we should do, especially in healthcare, is to enhance user experience.”
The entrepreneur’s audacity
Granted, Lim may have started Doctor Anywhere without a medical background, but the 40-year-old had plunged into the start-up world with a decade of experience at Standard Chartered and Temasek. “I remember when I started off in private equity, I didn’t even know what Microsoft Excel was,” admits Lim. “What audacity did I have back then to even think that I could have done it?”
He cites “a dose of craziness” for propelling him through long hours — “8am to 5am for the first couple of years” — and building financial models. “It wasn’t the easiest decision to make, to say that I want to switch from engineering to finance, but nothing comes for free,” he says. “From there, I understood what drives and costs a business. It’s very similar to what I’m doing as a CEO. What is costing me money? If I don’t want to cut costs, then how can I drive revenue? All these things are interconnected.”
Lim spent the latter half of his eight years at Temasek with Pavilion Energy, a wholly-owned subsidiary Lim conceptualised and helped to start. Headquartered in Singapore, its global energy business involves natural gas supply and marketing activities in Southeast Asia and Europe; global LNG trading, shipping and optimisation; as well as energy hedging and financial solutions.
That was one of the biggest level-ups in my own career, jumping from purely investing to really starting something. You’re doing everything by yourself: finding an office space, hiring the first few employees, getting the software to connect [and] being stretched in every direction. All those dots really connected when I started Doctor Anywhere.
Like most start-up founders, those lessons are coming into play amid today’s tough market environment. “Over the past few years, most companies have become very fat with a crazy amount of capital being thrown at them. Now, we are going to the gym. We cut down on the fat, so that we can become more muscular when the time comes.”
Given the headwinds, a public listing is not currently on the table, says Lim. “Look, the current environment will not last forever. But whoever lasts this current environment will emerge much, much stronger, and we hope to be one of them. Then, that’s when we eventually find our way to an IPO or whatsoever.”
The company is, however, making its own moves in the public markets. In October, a special purpose vehicle indirectly wholly-owned by Doctor Anywhere offered to take over the Catalist-listed Asian Healthcare Specialists at 18.8 cents per share. The offer price represents a premium of 18.3% over the one-month volume weighted average price of the shares.
The vehicle, Labrador Park, has three members of the management of Doctor Anywhere on its board of directors. In addition to Lim, who is founder, CEO, chairman and sole executive director of Doctor Anywhere, the two other members are Ng Chen Xuan, Doctor Anywhere’s senior manager for corporate development; and Melissa Marie Tan Shu Ling, legal director of Doctor Anywhere.
As he accepts this year’s entrepreneurship award from EY, does Lim have a word of advice for potential founders? “If I had been from the healthcare space, I wouldn’t have started Doctor Anywhere… A lot of people who want to start something keep thinking about it and analysing the space over and over again. But the truth is, there’s no better way to start than to just do it.”
“It’s a bit like jogging,” he adds. “The most difficult part is wearing your shoes.”
Photos: Albert Chua/The Edge Singapore, EY
