US pharma giant Merck backs healthcare marketplace HD in Southeast Asia
Summary
It also assists people in finding specific surgeries and health checkups, aggregates services to lower costs and provides users with installment payment options.The startup has secured $7.8 million in equity funding to enhance its marketplace and invest further in its AI technology. The recent funding marks the first investment of U.S. pharma giant Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) in a health tech startup in Asia Pacific. Other participants in HDs funding included SBI Ven Capital, M Venture Partners, FEBE Ventures, and Partech Partners also participated in the latest financing.MSD, which produces the HPV vaccines, reached out to [us] because we were already selling a lot of HPV vaccines online that were being administered at the hospitals and clinics we work with, co-founder and CEO of HD Sheji Ho said in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch. It aims to reach 5,000 healthcare providers and 600,000 patients in 2025.The latest financing, which brings HDs total funding to $18 million, comes less than a year after it raised a $5.6 million round.In early 2024, HD started building an AI chatbot, Jib AI, which has been trained on anonymized healthcare product data, transaction data, and chat commerce datasets using advanced large language models. This approach leverages our existing B2C success to transition into B2B, effectively pursuing enterprise monetization from the outset.Most venture-backed healthcare startups in Southeast Asia, including Singapores Doctor Anywhere, Halodoc, and Alodokter in Indonesia, primarily focus on telehealth and virtual health services.