Globe Telecom Inc. expects its portfolio company KonsultaMD, a telemedicine provider, to “follow the footsteps of its sister company Mynt,” which recently gained double-unicorn status after raising additional funding earlier this month.
917 Ventures Managing Director Vince Yamat said the group is “bent on growing” KonsultaMD as the demand for remote medical access continues to be accelerated by the ongoing health crisis.
“We’ve had high hopes for KonsultaMD even before the pandemic. We saw it as a way to address the pain points in Philippine healthcare, which was suffering from a lack of healthcare professionals, inadequate health infrastructure, and limited accessibility, not to mention the high cost of medical consultation,” he said.
Yamat said telehealth has become an important innovation that will “stay and evolve.”
Globe is banking on the rising demand for digital consultations, similar to the boom in demand for financial technology (fintech), which propelled GCash’s parent company Mynt to have a valuation of $2 billion—the only startup in the Philippines to do so to date.
KonsultaMD CEO Cholo Tagaysay explained that for his group alone, medical consultations through the app “skyrocketed” by 1,549 percent to date when compared before the pandemic started. The app has been downloaded by over 1 million Filipinos since it was introduced before the Covid-19 crisis.
“Our situation has taken away the reluctance of many Filipinos to try telehealth services. People are looking for ways to stay safe from the virus while our hospitals are overwhelmed with patients. KonsultaMD has become a platform that connects Filipinos to much-needed medical consults for non-emergency cases,” he said.
Beyond the pandemic, Tagaysay said the group is bullish that the demand for teleconsultations will continue to persist, “if the current trend is an indication,” citing the growth in medical consults despite the easing of restrictions earlier this year.