Zuellig Pharma, the region’s healthcare services provider, announced investment in a Singapore-based healthtech startup Klinify. Klinify is a cloud-based clinic management solution that helps doctors go digital, without interrupting their work processes. Here is a lightly edited version of the discussion with Maarten Kelder (Senior Vice President, Strategy & Solutions, Zuellig Pharma) and Krishanthan Surendran (Founder & CEO, Klinify):
Q. Before we delve into the specifics of this partnership, please elaborate on the broad technology and solutions landscape that Zuellig Pharma has been considering or has ventured into, as part of its overall business vision?
Maarten: Zuellig been supporting growth of the pharma industry for almost a hundred years now. That said, technology, data and digital in particular are increasingly becoming more important for us. We have a presence in 13 countries, with our business focussed on the Asian market. One of the things that we want to do now with technology is to come up with a service portfolio of value added services geared towards catering to our customers. We believe that the investments that we're making in the digital and data space right presently are really an important component of this, with the Klinify investment a specific example of that.
Q. What specific role do you see Singapore playing in delivering to this objective, especially as it evolves into an entrepreneurship and Life-Sciences hub in APAC?
Maarten: Singapore offers a fantastic entrepreneurial environment, always being amongst the top ten places globally that offer a conducive business environment for start-ups. I think the government’s emphasis is on providing a very clear and coordinated approach around what type of jobs they want to create, and what type of innovation they want to have in Singapore. This is really helpful, as it attracts organizations like us to come in here. Also, from the pharma industry standpoint, the focus on initiatives like building a Smart Nation and the Bio Health Care Hub that Singapore is becoming, serves are a really good linkage.
Q. So, coming to Klinify – how does this specifically fit into Zuellig’s business strategy, and what were the key drivers for this investment decision?
Maarten: We think that Klinify has the potential to really change the face of Clinic management. Krish and his team has spent thousands of hours really understanding what doctors do, what are the pain points they face in running their practice, and what are the obstacles to digitization. I think his team has also come up with a really good and efficient solution for it. Instead of doctors having to change their normal working practice, this solution integrates into how they function and we really believe that it is a new way of trying to digitize the workflow. There have been a lot of other unsuccessful attempts to get doctors on to a digital platform, but most of them have failed probably because doctors have a very specific way of functioning and any solution that requires a change to that will not work well. What Krish and his team has however achieved is that they have built a solution that seamlessly adapts to how the doctors work, instead of the other way round.
Q. As an entrepreneur, what were your key considerations, while evaluating this partnership from the perspective of Klinify? & if you could also elaborate on the benefits that you hope will result with this investment?
Krish: After developing the product for the Singapore market, and once we started receiving good adoption here, we realized that we needed investment and expertise to scale up. To help Klinify enter new markets and grow in the region, it needed to tie-up with a partner who had the experience and acumen of scaling up the business in such diverse market conditions. For instance, without this partnership, it would have been nearly impossible for us to build a sales force for each country, and adapt the product according to each market that we entered. So, we looked at Zuellig and it was a natural partnership, as out visions aligned – Zuellig was looking into data and data analytics and our ex...
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