Episode’s transcript

Julio Martinez: 0:00

Welcome to the Latin MedTech leaders podcast. A conversation with MedTech leaders who have succeeded or plan to succeed in Latin America. Please subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform, apple podcast, Spotify, Google podcast, Amazon music is teacher tune. I heard radio Pandora or welcome to the Latin me leaders podcast. A conversation with leaders who have succeeded or planned to succeed in Latin America today. Our guest is Hacobo TK co-founder and CEO at hello, Dr. A Mexican startup providing data driven health telehealth services. So Hacobo, it's great to have you here today. Welcome to the show.

Jacobo Luchtan: 0:44

Thank you, Julio. I'm I'm so happy to be joining you. Thank you for the opportunity.

Julio Martinez: 0:49

Awesome. Havo so let's get started here. Um, could you please still listeners about your journey? How is it that you got involved in Mexico, Latin American general? What's the Genesis of what you're doing today?

Jacobo Luchtan: 1:03

Yeah, I was, first of all, I'm Mexican and I was born, born and raised in Mexico and I've worked abroad, but I've worked, uh, I've mainly brought in, worked in Mexico and Latin American countries, Spanish speaking countries specifically. And, um, my journey in Latin America has been through different sectors. I've worked in the security intelligence business. I've worked in the fitness sector also, and now I'm working in the, in the health tech sec sector. And what I can say about Latin America is that it's a market full of potential and full of growth. And there's tons of opportunities that, uh, that are probably already explored in Europe and in the USA and that in Mexico and Latin America, very, in a very briefly way they've been explored. So it's a super opportunity I loved with, uh, to work with Latin American people. We're very passionate about our work and they're good, there's goods and bad, but I'm very happy and I plan to continue working for the rest of my life in this sector.

Julio Martinez: 2:07

Beautiful. Excellent. All right. So let's start with, or let's continue with, uh, trends. What trends do you see happening in Latin America today that are relevant to our discussion or relevant to the telehealth services that you're providing?

Jacobo Luchtan: 2:24

Yeah, well, right now I see a major trend regarding technology. Um, in the past, uh, technology, hasn't been the strength of the Latin American, uh, sector, Latin American countries. You rarely heard of unicorns or of really big startups, uh, coming from the Latin American scene. And now you go into LinkedIn every day and you hear a new one every day. And, and, and that gets me super excited. It's become my daily morning routine to see what's happening with the second with, with the, with the sector. And it, it really get, gets me very emotional and I'm very happy that, uh, finally Latin America is starting to become a market that can be a leader or a trend for many of the different, uh, sectors regarding like e-commerce study health. Um, and, and many others coming. Obviously the epidemic, I think the COVID epidemic was a very big, uh, player in this part because many American countries were very strict with their, uh, were, uh, COVID rules and many were not at all like Mexico<laugh>. So, so maybe, I mean, for some, or at least on my sector, on the telehealth sector, we saw like a significant advantage. Like people that didn't know what a cure code was after co after COVID like, everyone knows how to use it. All the smartphones can scan it, or every, everyone has an app to scan them. And like the epidemic really helped the sector. And I think in Mexico, there, there weren't many rules regarding COVID like, you didn't have any mandatory, um, you didn't have to stay at home, uh, by obligation. So you could work still, uh, with people, you could see people. Um, so I think this was, uh, a very positive thing that happened and maybe one of the reasons that the whole startup scene and the whole like digital healthcare, uh, ecosystem started to grow and had a very big push, like before Imma very fan of analytics and, and statistics. And before you could go in on statistics and you would see the market penetration or the user penetration of, of telecom services in Mexico, Latin America, and it was below 2% a year. And now with the new, with, with these new trends and because doctors, many doctors were without work for a year, for a year almost. And they had to, uh, they had to move to a, to a remote way of, or an online way of, of giving, uh, their care. So the user penetration of, of, of telehealth has increased significantly, at least in Latin America.

Julio Martinez: 5:19

Wow. That's good. That's good. You know, you're bringing up very good points. I don't know where to start. I mean, uh, the, uh, cell phone penetration is a big trend. Definitely the, the, the digital services people are now interacting with the government, interacting with private companies, uh, on their cell phone and, and they receiving, um, a comment that I heard somebody in the us, it was, I think it was one of these interviews. He said the cell phone is a new clinic. So people and doctors, I mean, patients and doctors are starting to realize that we can do so much with technology in, in healthcare and, and traditionally healthcare hasn't really adapted many technology tools. I mean, EMRs are kind of a, a new thing. I mean, that's very surprising<laugh>

Jacobo Luchtan: 6:08

Yeah, that's right. And that's actually one of the touch points. One of our pain points that we live through with every day is that, uh, usually the doctors are not, uh, very friendly with technology. Uh, they like to do things their way, and they like to write on the paper on the paper, all the registrations of the, on the medical, uh, records of the patients and everything, all the prescriptions. And now they're starting to see that technology is a friend and that it's, it's pretty simple that the problem that I think caused it is because many of the different platforms and technology that, that existed on the he, on the healthcare ecosystem was very robust and very complicated. So when they, when a doctor was trying to use it, it was, it took either a very long onboarding process or they quit and they didn't continue. And we've been, we've been receiving a very good, uh, a very good acceptance on of our product because it's simple. That's, that's one of the, that's one of our slogans, our, our low, our like mantra is to keep simple. I dunno if you've heard of kids. No. Keep, keep it.

Julio Martinez: 7:17

Yeah. Keep it simple. Stupid. Yes, sure. Yeah.

Jacobo Luchtan: 7:19

That's right.<laugh> so that's like, I just had a sprint meeting with our development team. We were talking about some sophisticated algorithms to rate the doctors and we like, no, this is not simple. It's we just scraped everything. And we, we, we, we started from SCR from scratch. Cause it wasn't simple to understand.

Julio Martinez: 7:35

Very good. Very good. Yeah. Albert Einstein used to say keep things. No. Okay. Uh, make things simple. Not simpler.

Jacobo Luchtan: 7:45

<laugh> yeah. That's right. Make things simple. Not simpler. That's a good one. I'm gonna use it.

Julio Martinez: 7:48

Yeah. Yeah. I asked that you say is a part of his famous quotes<laugh> anyway, so let's continue here. Ha global. So let's talk about, uh, Hilo doctor. I mean, what is it that you guys are doing today in Latin America?

Jacobo Luchtan: 8:00

Yeah, I mean, we started hello doctor in July, 2019 before the epidemic. Um, and we started with the idea of, uh, increasing accessibility and quality of healthcare services in Latin America. Um, unfortunately many, many countries. And the one that I know more Mexico has a public healthcare that lacks a lot of things, both in accessibility and quality. And like, I I've been to the public hospitals many times to see what's the experience over there. We've been like, like giving flyers out about her doctor and really with yeah. Just, and then we, and then like two out of the five times we've done it, many police officers like, uh, traces, because you're gonna do those types of things outside of those hospitals. But that's a, that's an anecdote for another time.

Julio Martinez: 8:52

Yeah, exactly.<laugh> but

Jacobo Luchtan: 8:53

That's,

Julio Martinez: 8:54

That's a way, I think it's public space, right? Yeah. It's public. Street's public.

Jacobo Luchtan: 8:57

Yeah. That's right.

Julio Martinez: 8:58

Anyway, that's another discussion.

Jacobo Luchtan: 9:00

Yeah. But I mean, that has helped us, helped us a lot to find product market fit know and to, and to be with the, to be with the people. And we identify that there's the public healthcare in Mexico specifically. It's not good. It's actually broken. Um, so we tried to, hello. Doctor was born as a doctor centric platform. Our idea when it was born was to give the doctors, this digital consult this digital office where they can invite their patients and give them telehealth consultations via video, audio, or chat. And then after a year we found out that the doctors really don't want to move the way they're they, they are working and, and it's very hard, but we identify that we as patients, we do want to move. We do want to get healthcare through, through like, and not being to have to go to the hospital and moving, uh, two hours away to go to the hospital and to be able to give accessibility to, to a doctor for people that are very far away in rural areas, in remote areas. So we moved our focus to a, a more patient centric platform. And, uh, we successfully released the, one of the, I don't know if the only, because I don't know all of the, all the, all of the platforms, but I can say were very unique in launching a completely free telehealth service. We launched it in. Yeah.

Julio Martinez: 10:25

You've never heard about that, actually.

Jacobo Luchtan: 10:27

Yeah. So the experiences that you download, hello doctor, it takes you 30 seconds to schedule a consultation. A doctor calls you through video, audio or chat. You choose whatever way you want it. And they give you the consultation. They diagnose, uh, they give a diagnosis, a treatment plan, a digital recipe, and you can even order the recipe from the app and it can be delivered in all around Mexico. So it's, it's the delivery. The drug delivery delivery is nationwide. So that was one of the first services that we released. We, we released that service in August, 2021. Um, unfortunately we've reached almost 3000 successful consultations and obviously it has been a, a rough path. We've changed things around. And I mean, we've, um, we've had like difficult experiences where the platform just goes down for a couple of days and we lose a lot, a bunch of consultations. Yeah. But it's normal. And, but it, but it's, um, I mean, we're very happy. Like we've really enjoy our work and we, and the platform is, um, is open in all Latin America. You can, you can use it and you can download it in all Latin America. I mean, I mean, actually in the whole continent in all America, you can also use it in

Julio Martinez: 11:44

States anywhere. I mean, so anywhere, anywhere in the world who, anybody who speaks Spanish,

Jacobo Luchtan: 11:49

I mean, right, right now, because of some compliance, things were not in Europe and Asia.

Julio Martinez: 11:54

Oh, you are limited to certain countries in Latin America.

Jacobo Luchtan: 11:56

Yeah. Because we're compliant with HIPAA, we're compliant with Mexican laws and with, with Brazil and other things. So that's why we released the app in those countries. That's why we don't, we have any, any<inaudible>, but GDPR, we not compliant with GDPR yet. That's for Europe.

Julio Martinez: 12:10

Europe. Yeah.

Jacobo Luchtan: 12:11

So that's why we didn't release it. So, yeah. And right now we're actually working on a, on a new society where you, where you can choose your language. And we, we tell you which doctors speak Spanish or English. So, so also English speaking people can, can take the consultation. So yeah, I mean, we, we've been focusing on being a completely like patient centric and we release this, this service in order to understand what was a, what are the patients looking for? What are users looking for? We release, we release it originally only with general medicine, but right now you can get free consultations for general medicine, veterinarians, nutritionist, psychologists, and physiotherapists. So

Julio Martinez: 12:55

That's veterinarians too. I mean, you can also get a consultation for your pet

Jacobo Luchtan: 13:00

That yeah. That's actually one of the trending specialty specialties that we've seeing

Julio Martinez: 13:04

Ever heard that before.

Jacobo Luchtan: 13:05

Yeah. Because like, if you feel, if you have a, I don't know, a sore throat, you know, you have a sore throat and you maybe know that you can take some vitamin C, but if your dog, for example, has, I don't know, he doesn't feel well or well, or you see him like acting strange or under the weather. Like he cannot tell you anything. And it's very, like, we've, we've found a way of, of, of having a use on the platform by putting a veterinarians there. And many people use them. And there's many people that use them many times a week because they think their pets are having a problem or whatever. And it's been one of the use cases that ha it is having a lot of

Julio Martinez: 13:45

That's very unique. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I hear about, uh, company in the us that is doing dentistry, you know, dental consultations. Um, and that's something I haven't seen Latin America yet.

Jacobo Luchtan: 13:58

Yeah. Actually, that's one of the that's in, on our pipeline. It's a little, it's a little hard because I mean, obviously there are specialties that are more friendly with telehealth than others. For example, an endocrinologist doesn't need to see you every time he just reads some tests, reads hormones, and overall, he can tell you what you have and give you treatment plan. But a dentist, like usually you have to go to dentist like here, he's gonna give you a drug or he's gonna give you a, a preventive treatment, but you're gonna have to eventually go to the dentist if you have a problem. Yeah. But yeah, those are we, we tried to focus on the, we, we were trained to focus on the specialties that are, that are more friendly with telehealth. And, but the idea is to move, move forward from there. And I mean, right now we have three, one of the is a free telehealth consultations. The other one is a service that we released a couple of weeks ago that is called express consultation. So you can talk with like second, uh, level specialists. Let's say like, we call them like a first level would be a general physician. A second level would be a, a pediatrician, a gynecologist, a cardiologist, an endocrinologist, like someone that you already know, like if you are gonna go with a cardiologist it's because maybe you already went with a general practitioner or you Googled a lot. So you can know that I want to go with a cardiologist. So the idea here is that you can talk with a specialist for$5,

Julio Martinez: 15:31

$5. Okay. Yeah. That's a pain service. A free level is you practitioner is free. The second level specialist is$5.

Jacobo Luchtan: 15:40

It's just, yeah, it's, it's just$5. That way you're able to talk with a specialist. And, and then if you like the specialist, you can have a follow up consultation, but maybe that follow up is going to be at their office with their standard rate. And the third service we have is, uh, we call it the health hospital, which is we have more than 800 doctors that have created their digital office widows that, uh, you can look for a dermatologist. For example, you filter the, the, in the search engine, the dermatologist, you can find to have 20 dermatologists and you can see all their track records, you can see their reviews, you can see what are their prices. You can see where they're located. And that way you just see, like, see a menu of the doctors we have and you pick them. And, and that way you have a consultation and the prices of those consultations are based on each doctor. We have doctors from AAA hospitals that maybe charge$100 a consultation. And then, then doctors that maybe just started their practice and the consultation.

Julio Martinez: 16:43

Yeah. Yeah, sure. So it's more like a directory for prime for, for, you know, the top physicians.

Jacobo Luchtan: 16:48

That's right. And the, and the, and the doctors that are in, in the free telehealth service and the express consultation are hello, doctor, doc doctors. That's they're hello, doctor practitioners. So we hire, oh, I

Julio Martinez: 17:00

See. Highly the first level, the second level. Hello, doctor, uh, employees, internal doctors. The third level is external specialists.

Jacobo Luchtan: 17:07

Got it. That's that's right. Okay. That's how it's structured that way. We, we we're able to control. That's why we're able to give it so cheap because we, we are right now, we're, we're absorbing, uh, almost all of the consultation prices

Julio Martinez: 17:23

In order. Yeah. I can see that$5 is very low. I mean, to pay a specialist,

Jacobo Luchtan: 17:27

I mean, to pay a specialist for$5, it's not even the cost of a copay.

Julio Martinez: 17:31

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and, and, and Hacobo, how can people pay for this? Because in Latin America, there's always a challenge of, you know,

Jacobo Luchtan: 17:39

Yeah. The payment methods,

Julio Martinez: 17:40

Not many people have bank accounts or credit cards, debit cards. It's just difficult. Lot of informal economy out there in the streets.

Jacobo Luchtan: 17:47

That's right. I mean, right now you have two payment methods and we're expanding them right now. You can pay, pay by credit card or debit card. You just added there. And it's just charged when the consultation is finished or you can pay in<inaudible><inaudible> is a convenient store that has thousands of, of convenience stores in Mexico. It's

Julio Martinez: 18:05

It's like seven 11 in the us. Seven,

Jacobo Luchtan: 18:08

11 times, 10

Julio Martinez: 18:10

Times. 10<laugh>. Yeah. I mean, wow. Yeah, that's true. I've been to Mexico city. I've seen it in every corner. You see

Jacobo Luchtan: 18:16

<inaudible>. Yeah. So when you want to pay for a consultation, you can say, okay, I wanna pay in<inaudible> you get a Q code, and then you go to the<inaudible>, you scan it, you pay for your$5 and then, and then you get the consultation confirmed and you can have the consultation. So that way you can pay cash.

Julio Martinez: 18:31

That's genius. That's really good. I mean, yeah.

Jacobo Luchtan: 18:34

Wow. We, we implemented that a month ago almost. Yeah. So it's it, it's one of the new things that we have on the platform.

Julio Martinez: 18:42

All right. So let's talk about coverage. I mean, let's say somebody in Columbia wants to access the, the, the, uh, service downloads the app, uh, and wants the$5 or the, the, the third level, um, consultations. I mean, can you accept payments? Are you in compliance with local laws and everything?

Jacobo Luchtan: 19:04

Yes, because I mean, to be super straightforward, we're not using, we, we don't, we're, we're not a FinTech. We don't save the data. So we're using a third party to manage all of the payment from third parties and they have coverage all around the world. And so like, based on your answer is our coverage is all, all America. So practically, I mean, if you get a, if you are in Chi, you're in Argentina, you're in colo. If you're in Canada, if you're in Alaska, you can download a and schedule a consultation. The experience you can have is the same as if you are in Mexico. That's the, the advantage of,

Julio Martinez: 19:40

Okay, so you have an Oxo equivalent.

Jacobo Luchtan: 19:43

Oh, oh, okay. That's what it meant. OK. So the coverage in all Latin, Latin, in Latin American countries that don't have Oxo, it's only credit card in debit card.

Julio Martinez: 19:51

Exactly. That's what it meant. Oh, okay. That was really my question. Oh, okay. So you have to get into agreement with the equivalent of Oxo in coloia and Chile. Cause<inaudible> in Colombia, for example, has limited locations. Not as many as in Mexico. Yeah. That's right. It's kinda a new thing.

Jacobo Luchtan: 20:05

Yeah. That's right. Like FEA, which is the guys that on<inaudible> I think they have already in Peru, Colombia, and they're expanding slowly, but yeah. I mean, in order to pay for our services cash, we need to find coverage, uh, in all of, on all of the other countries.

Julio Martinez: 20:22

Yeah. All right. But still it's, that's

Jacobo Luchtan: 20:24

All type on the pipeline.

Julio Martinez: 20:26

Okay. That's for the second level, for the third level, do you have already doctors in the directory in other countries

Jacobo Luchtan: 20:31

Right now? All the doctors right now are only in Mexico.

Julio Martinez: 20:36

Okay.

Jacobo Luchtan: 20:36

Yeah. We, when, when we open our, our next office, probably it's going to be in Colombia. We're gonna open the market to doctors. The thing is, um, we are very rigorous with the quality of our doctors and we, we need to see them like, like we are, if we want to hire a new doctor, at least for our free consultation and for the consultant and the express consultation, we need to be able to at least see them once a month. Like we have a, we have a massive meeting once a month with all of the doctors last month, we, they were 40 doctors and we, and they tell us a lot of feedback on the app. They tell us feedback, feedback on the patients, misuse on some of the, on the patient side, we've been having some of those cases also that they misuse the telehealth service for something else. Um, so we don't plan to open them to open up to doctors from other countries unless we open an office.

Julio Martinez: 21:33

Sure. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. Hmm. All right. So Hako, let's talk about challenges. I mean, what's been the, the most pressing challenge or set of challenges you've had in Mexico and the other countries in Latin America,

Jacobo Luchtan: 21:46

Number one challenge is making the app work.<laugh> that that's number one challenge, like in making the app work for each release, that has been one of the main challenges, each release. Yeah. Each release it's, uh, grilling job to test everything out, to see that we have the, the, the manner amount of box possible. And the other challenge has been that the patients take the consultations<laugh> because like marketing

Julio Martinez: 22:12

Market. Yeah. Sales.

Jacobo Luchtan: 22:13

Yeah. Not only sales, like fortunately the market has liked our ads and has liked our platform. And we've been having a very aggressive growth. The thing is they don't believe the service. So our marketing is get free consultations now. And they, and they, and usually what this was we've been seeing is that the users look at it and they say, no, it doesn't, it doesn't, it's impossible. They download the app. They, it takes them 30 seconds to do it. And then to schedule it. And then in the next two hours, or maybe the next day that the doctor is calling them and they receive the, the, they call on their phone. It's like, ah, no, I, I don't really want a consultation and they hang up. So we we've been having a lot of those issues. I can say maybe like maybe 30% of all of the schedule, really

Julio Martinez: 23:02

3%. I'm just curious. Just wanna know if it

Jacobo Luchtan: 23:04

Is true or not. Yeah. Maybe 30% of the consultations we have, unfortunately are unsuccessful consultations. That has been one of the challenges and we, and we're improving it. We're improving, improving the communication. We implemented a WhatsApp integration. So we can communicate with the patients 10 minutes before the consultation. And we invite them to the, the waiting room in order for them. So we're trying to implement some, some ways for them, for this to not happen. But this has been one of the challenges. That's why, when I'm saying 3000 successful consultations is that 3000 patients that were connected with doctors with a diagnosis, and then that they get treatment plan. It's not just that they schedule something and, and they don't get it.

Julio Martinez: 23:47

It, you know, another challenge that I see here is with local laws. And I'm gonna tell you what is happening in colo, at least, uh, that I know because Colombia is, uh, is my home country. And I'm, I'm, we do a lot of business in Columbia and, uh, in 20 17, 20 19, something like that, they issue new laws for, uh, telehealth. And one of the restrictions that they have is you can only offer, they call it in the law, tele orientation services. They, you can orient, you can guide the patient, but you cannot do an actual medical concentration. Yet. You need to be a brick and model, you know, a building, a clinic, a hospital to have your own, your own servers, your own doctors, your own app. So that limits innovation in this space like you're doing in Mexico. So that's something to consider when you start growing in other

Jacobo Luchtan: 24:49

Countries. Yes, of course. And I mean, you've addressed one of the issues that we had when we were first born, which is what, what do I call my service? And in, in Mexico, there's no current law that says that you cannot say it's a consultation, but there, but it's not accepted. That's why, I mean, if you don't, if you download the app, you're gonna see that everywhere. We, we don't say consultations in Spanish. We say accessor, which is orientations also. But in, but in the end, I mean, it's not like our doctors are giving a different service because it's an orientation or it's a consultation. It's not like we're, we don't limit the time of the consultation to 20 minutes. A psychologists consultation can go up to two hours and they can use the app for, to two hours and they just go, it's just, uh, it's just a word.<laugh> just a word. And it's yeah. And, and, and, and this word I think was created to protect the, the, the real physical consultations, because something that, something that is true is that a physical con, you cannot do what the same in a physical consultation in person and in a telehealth consultation, like you cannot do the same amount of things, even if you had, uh, digital devices in order that, that measured with a very, uh, low, uh, error margin, the heart rate. And, and, and to be able to see with a high definition camera at the throat. I mean, there's ways of doing those, but it's not an actu it's not the same service. And that, that's why also we can, the doctors usually give or charge less for a telehealth service than a in person consultation. So I think, I think it's good that the different governments are differentiating from a consultation and an orientation, but I think we're gonna move one of the, I don't think it's a threat, but it's, uh, we're just gonna, we just have to do it right. That, uh, regulation is coming our way, whether we want it or not. Like just last week, uh, the Mexican Senate released a document where they plan to implement regulation in inte a 27 page, a 27 page, uh, plan to, to implement. And, and it, you know, it's very, um, political, but, but it's coming our way. We have to, to be prepared and, and, and to try to do it on our, on our own terms, but it, but it's, but it's one of the threats slash opportunities that, that we have

Julio Martinez: 27:20

Exactly. Exactly. Well, and, and, uh, in the rest of Latin America, beyond Mexico, in what other countries you've seen the highest

Jacobo Luchtan: 27:29

Adoption, Argentina is crazy

Julio Martinez: 27:31

Argentina,

Jacobo Luchtan: 27:32

Huh? Yeah. A like when we release the service, Colomb Mexico were on the top Mexico, maybe 60% of our users were in Mexico and 40% Colombia. But in the last three months I've seen something like Argentina had a user growth of 2000% in the last month they grew. Wow. Like outta that happened, I have no idea. I would love to tell you, maybe they, like, they liked our new ads. They like the words that we're, we're saying, I guess, but Argentina has been one of the main ones, Chile also, um, Ecuador, Venezuela, uh, like they've been liking it a lot. Like the us it's up and down, up and down. And we've been having some user from some users also from India and other countries that probably are living over probably they're living over there. And they have their app store linked with some country Latin American. That's why they're being able to download the app and get a consultation over there. And, but yeah, I mean the main countries that maybe we would have, if I, if I was to decide today were to open an office, I would say, number one, colo, number two, Argentina, probably see, even, even though Argentina, economically is not very strong, but we've seen numbers that we haven't seen in other country.

Julio Martinez: 28:47

Excellent. I'm glad, I'm glad to hear this, that you already have solid, uh, market traction in these countries. And you also brought up something that not many people talk about, which is the us, the us is another country America. I mean, there's, there's probably 40 million. Yeah. Hispanics<laugh> in

Jacobo Luchtan: 29:04

The us. Yeah. Not only 40 million, 15 million of those are immigrants. And yeah, that's, that's another super big, uh, audience that probably in the future, we're gonna, we're gonna be able to give them services. And because, I mean, right now they can get telehealth, but they cannot get, uh, a recipe in the United States. They

Julio Martinez: 29:26

Exactly a prescription

Jacobo Luchtan: 29:27

Prescription that's right. So we're working towards being able to, to do that possible.

Julio Martinez: 29:33

So, so with the pharmacy, let's talk about that for a minute before we close, because we're close at the end of the show. Um, so you said that at least in Mexico, you can fulfill the prescription and send the drug, whatever it is to the patient's house. Yeah. In, in what time? 24 hours, 48 hours. If,

Jacobo Luchtan: 29:52

If you're in the, if you're in Mexico city and it's before 5:00 PM, you can get it the same day. Wow. And if it's outside of Mexico city, between 24 to 48 hours,

Julio Martinez: 30:03

Very good. Very good. And, and of course there is, that's a revenue source. I mean, you make money with that service. Yeah.

Jacobo Luchtan: 30:11

I mean, we have a rebate. We, we, we use another service that we don't do the delivery it's party. And we, and we get a very small revenue of all the recipes that are fulfilled through our channel. And we also have through this same partner, we have a, like, when you get a re a recipe from hello, doctor, you get a, a barcode for each medicine. And when you go, like, we have partnerships with, I think it's almost 10,000 points of sale, different pharmacies in all around Mexico. But if you go with our recipe and they see our logo with their, with the barcode, you can get discounts. So, so it's one of the, the, the benefits that you have of also getting a consultation with, or it's free. And then you gotta, you got a discount<laugh>

Julio Martinez: 30:58

Okay. So you go, you are in the us, you know, our audience is mostly in the us. So you have a partnership with CVS, with Walgreens, for example, in Mexico. Yeah. So I go with the app and they will fulfill at a discount.

Jacobo Luchtan: 31:12

Yeah. They scan the bar code. If it's a generic medicine, usually there's higher discounts up to 50%. And if it's a branded medicine, you can get up to 10% discount, something like that. But the idea is to eventually have this service available in the United States and that you can go with the hello doctor recipe. And if it's not a controlled drug, uh, like ACEP, like anti, like, like a psychotropic drug, which is very sophisticated, um, you can get it, uh, just, uh, sorted out on any, any Walgreens or any CVS. Yeah. But there's, but there's a lot of compliance in the United States.

Julio Martinez: 31:51

Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. I know that's a different market. Yeah. Different rules.

Jacobo Luchtan: 31:54

Yeah. We're starting to export it.

Julio Martinez: 31:57

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I mean, this is fascinating how global, um, I am so, so impressed with your work and your team of course. And, um, what about competitors? I mean, who else is out there doing something similar?

Jacobo Luchtan: 32:13

Well, I can say that at least in, since COVID started, I can name 100 startups that are focusing on telehealth in, in Latin America. And out of those 100, probably some are not, are not, they don't do not exist anymore, but there are many competitors there there's also market for everyone. And what, what I have seen is that every platform is different. Every platform has a different tango there's platforms that more are more focused on the, on corporate, like, uh, on, on like, like healthy companies, company solutions, there's there's platforms, more focused on the doctor instead of being like more doctor centric instead of patient centric. There's many, many, many different flavors and options. And I, I, that's why I would say that we're very unique in the, in the service that we provide. But, eh, I think that, that, I mean, every time I see a new one, that's good news because it's, it's someone, it validates a space, it validates for the venture capitals that it, that it's a space that many people are, are trying or that see that there's future on it. And there's market for everyone. I mean, the, the Mar the outpatient consultation market in LA America is huge. So,

Julio Martinez: 33:30

Yeah. Is, is so huge that I think that rap is getting involved in telehealth. Yeah.

Jacobo Luchtan: 33:35

Correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah. I mean, one of our services, and we're exploring that path with them is we call it TA telehealth as a service. So we made a bundle of our free consultation service. It's an K and you can plug this into any platform. So we're talking about insurance companies that have their home, their own apps, like BU like Bupa, we're talking about fin, FinTech, eCommerce, like all of these platforms, like if you're listening to this and you have one of those, give us a ring, we have a SDK that you can, you can put in your platform, you can put in your app, you can put in your platform. And it's, it's really amazing because it makes your product deeper. Now, one of the things that makes Google, Google is that's super deep. Now you have many, many things you can do with it. And if you are, I don't know, a FinTech and you give credit to people and you just, in two weeks, you can plug in a telecom service and you make your product deeper like that. So, so, so yeah, it's one of the services that I'm very, I'm very enthusiastic of seeing that, uh, product growth grow a lot.

Julio Martinez: 34:39

Very good idea. Yeah. Excellent HaBO. Alright, Haba, we're close to the end of the show. And, uh, the last, uh, question that I have for you here is something that I always ask my guest that towards the, the, the end of the, uh, interview, which is if you had the CEO of, uh, of a company in the United States or Europe that is just thinking about investments in Latin America, or starting a company in Latin America, or it's trying to sell product or service in the region, what would you say to him or to her as last words of wisdom?

Jacobo Luchtan: 35:14

What I would say is that, um, it's a market with a lot of hunger and with a lot of opportunity, and that has been, it has just tons of potential. I mean, I mean, if, if I were to start a telehealth platform in the United States, I would not grow as fast as I am growing. I mean, the, like the, the users, the Latin American people are amazing. They're very passionate people and they're eager to have more, to get more. And if we put it, if we put it on their hands and they can understand it, I mean, they can throw you to the sky. Like it like it, they can drive you, like, it's amazing. The, the, the Latin, Latin American people and the market is, is just crazy. How, if you find something that they would, they would like, they would just like, you would be amazed at, at, at how, at the level of acceptance they will have. And like, we have a meeting once a week with the whole team where we read the success cases. We had the, the grid, we have one person that's only focused on talking with patients and documented all the success cases. And we have more than hundreds in all, all of Latin American countries. I, I think except of Brazil, because we, we don't speak Portuguese, but it's amazing how you talk to, like, you hear people out and it's like, I I've managed to help this person. I've managed to give them a service that they were looking for. They, I, I answer that question and I would tell them, like, in simple, words're very hungry can give us food.<laugh>

Julio Martinez: 36:55

Excellent. Excellent. No, you are solving a big problem in the region, uh, which you mentioned at the beginning of the interview, which was the, the, the accessibility and quality of the service. So, I mean, you don't, I mean, sometimes I've seen people standing in line for hours just to see a doctor or just to get an appointment, to see a doctor<laugh> in a, in a month

Jacobo Luchtan: 37:19

That's right. That's experience. I have, every time I go to the public hospitals in Mexico, like people go there at 5:00 AM just to get, uh, a ticket or to get a ticket, to get line. And then when they get to the end of line at 5:00 PM, there's no more medicine. No, it's, it's, I've seen eyes. And it's like, we're very like the, the purpose of our platform is what drives all of the people that work at.

Julio Martinez: 37:49

Excellent. Ha thank you for that. And you're doing arch sharing every job, I mean, congratulations. So thank you for being here in the show today. I look forward to being in touch with you and, uh, thank you,

Jacobo Luchtan: 37:59

Julio. Thank you. Very happy to be in this audience and reach out if you want and test the app. Does the app it's for free<laugh>

Julio Martinez: 38:07

Absolutely. I will download it myself, actually. Thank you, Julio.