🧑‍⚕️🏥 The Amazon of Health Services & AirBnB for Surgeries

Yo, it's your boy, Hong and this is micro digest. The newsletter that delivers your order of daily Southeast Asian tech news...with a side of memes.

We're the Grab of newsletters.

Here's what we got for you:

• 🌊 The SEA - HD - The Amazon of Health Services & AirBnB for Surgeries

• ⛵ SEAppets - Total food delivery spending in SEA reached USD $16.3 billion

• 💰 SEA Deals  

• 🖼️ AI Image of the day

• 🐣 Tweet of the day

Markets 📈

 Ok, first off, this startup's website is the most basic, "non-startupty" website I've ever seen. But looks can be deceiving especially when you checked out their business model and I gotta say I'm impressed. 

I'm talking about HD

🤷‍♂️ Who is HD? 

• That's right, that's the name

• HD is healthcare startup based in Bangkok, Thailand

• They have 2 separate business under one roof: HDmall and HDcare

🛠️ What do they do?

• Launched in 2019, HDmall is a marketplace that connects patients to hospitals, clinics, operating rooms and surgeons

• They also provide healthcare financing solutions to lower the barrier to affordable healthcare

• So far HD has served around 250,000 patients

• Think of them as the Amazon of health services

• I know, another marketplace startup but their business is sort of interesting

• In November 2022, a few months ago, HD launches another platform called HDcare 

• This platform connects 3 different parties and brings them together: private surgeons, patients who want a cheaper surgery and vacant surgery rooms at hospitals

• Think of them as the Airbnb for surgeries

• The hospitals get to increase their utilization ratio, the patients get to save 15%-20% and the surgeons get to earn an extra buck

• It's win-win-win situation for everyone

🤔 Thoughts

• During the bull market, telehealth stocks were hot

• In the West, telehealth seems to be all the rage. You Zoom a general physician, they give you a prescription and you go to the nearby CVS to get your antibiotics

• Here, we just suck it up. Jk 

• Here in SEA, we just go over the counter at the pharmacy and ask the pharmacist to give us whatever meds he/she thinks we need

• That's why I think as compared to telehealth, healthcare marketplace makes more sense in SEA

SEAppets ⛵

1. Carousell has appointed the founder of Ox Street to be their head of luxury category. Gijs Verheijke was the founder and former CEO of OX Street, a marketplace for sneakers and streetwear. Carousell acquired Ox Street for an undisclosed amount in October 2021.

2. Total food delivery spending in SEA reached USD $16.3 billion in 2022, 2 years after the Covid-19 boom. The growth was driven primarily by the region's smallest food delivery markets: Phillippines, Malaysia and Vietnam. According to the report, Grab is estimated to account for 54 per cent or US$8.8 billion of the region’s food delivery GMV.

So the reports also showed that Malaysia is a smaller food delivery market compared to Singapore. Do you know why? coz they got nothing good to eat 

3. MDEC is expecting US$6.7 billion in revenue from the digital sector and US$3.71 billion in exports within the next three years. MDEC is focused on creating jobs and leveraging China's expertise. MDEC is a government agency that leads the digital transformation of the Malaysian economy.

4. Su Zhu and Kyle Davis are planning to raise $25 million for their new venture called GTX. (C'mon man, you could've at least come up with a better than that). If their names sound familiar, it's because they're the founders of 3 Arrow Capital, a Singapore-based crypto hedge fund that went bankrupt last year.

SEA Deals 💰

1. Mayani, an agri-fisheries startup secured USD $1.7 million in an oversubscribed seed funding led by Silicon Valley agtech VC AgFunder.

AI images of the day 🖼️

Penang 2126

Tweet of the day 🐣

Touche 🥲

That's a wrap for today. See you all tomorrow! 👋