The healthcare sector in Vietnam has been a "golden land" for domestic and foreign investors. (Photo: med247.vn) In early 2022, Vietnamese medical device manufacturerUSM Healthcare has secured a 30 million USD investment from private equity firmEastBridge Partners from the Republic of Korea (RoK).
This is a crucial turning point in USM Healthcare'sinternational integration, helping to expand and strengthen the company’sresearch and production capabilities to meet domestic and foreign market, USMHealthcare said.
In February 2022, Quadria Capital, Asia’s leadinghealthcare investment firm, announced the completion of its 90-million USD investmentin Con Cung, a Vietnamese retail chain for maternity and baby-care products.
The fund will be used to support Con Cung’s ambitionto launch 2,000 local stores by 2025, expand its product portfolio, as well asdevelop an all-in-one super app that provides personalised products andservices for over five million Vietnamese mothers.
One month later, healthcare startup Jio Health announcedthat it has completed a 20 million USD Series B investment led bySingapore-based healthcare investor, Heritas Capital. Other investors in theround include Fuchsia Ventures, Kasikorn Bank Group, and existing investor,Monk’s Hills Ventures.
This funding represents the largest in the company’shistory and will build on Jio Health’s aggressive growth, with plans to expandits smart clinics and omni-channel ecosystem across its primary market ofVietnam and pave the way for expansion into regional markets over the comingyears.
POC Pharma, a B2B service SaaS, also raised a 10.3-millionUSD Series A funding round led by Alven, along with co-investment from seedinvestors Picus Capital, FEBE Ventures, and FJ Labs who have doubled down theirinvestments.
The funds will be used to accelerate the roll-out ofits digital go-to-market solutions for the pharmaceutical industry in emergingcountries, in Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
Such contracts reflect that the health care sectoris drawing due attention of both domestic and foreign investors.
According to Fitch Solutions, healthcare spending inVietnam is expected to reach 23 billion USD by 2022, while BMI Research'sreport also shows that the pharmaceutical industry can reach 16.1 billion USDin size by 2026.
However, the number of startups in this field makesup only 2 percent out of more than 4,000 in Asia, which shows substantialopportunities and potential in the market.
Vu Thanh Long, CEO of eDoctor, pointed outchallenges to health care startups, noting that it is very hard to lureinvestments in this sphere, and it takes time for the startups to earn profits.
Other entrepreneurs shared the view that challengeslie with professional knowledge, market and competition, which, on the otherhand, created momentum for businesses to grow further./.
VNA
