In the nerve center of the Halodoc operation in central Jakarta one morning this month, some 400 young employees worked in the kind of featureless, chaotic, laptop-filled rooms that are the hallmark of a tech startup. Men in T-shirts and women in headscarves tapped away at keyboards, surrounded by piles of cardboard boxes, medicine delivery bags, flipcharts and stacks of bubble-wrapped chairs that were awaiting a move to larger premises. Below a giant pinboard of staff photos, an unused ping-pong table presented a plateful of snacks.
In the next room, half a dozen doctors in white coats sat round a table diagnosing the populace via laptops and mobile phones.
The face of a young man with round spectacles and a scar on his right cheek appeared on the phone of Dr. Alia Kusuma, one of the front line GPs. He had fallen from his motorcycle a month ago and was worried about the lasting effect. After a short consultation, Kusuma referred him to a laser treatment specialist.
Across the table, Dr. Devi Anneta was following up on the progress of a 51-year-old man who had been hospitalized for high cholesterol, hypertension and joint problems.
Halodoc covers the cost of the medical advice from its capital and from commissions on drug sales, lab tests and hospital referrals. A prominent, crossed-out label on the app shows that it will eventually charge upwards of 20,000 rupiah ($1.40) per consultation.
Halodoc’s rise reflects the pace of change in Indonesia, the world’s fastest-growing internet economy. Sudharta’s father founded a pharmaceutical materials trading house in 1975 that’s now called Mensa Group and has businesses from making drug ingredients to supplying medical equipment to hospitals. The conglomerate gave the young Sudharta connections to doctors, hospitals and pharmacies, and contacts at the health regulator with whom he could discuss new ideas. While his father’s company didn’t fund Halodoc directly, the startup rents offices in one of Mensa’s buildings.
One of Sudharta’s early encounters with medical care was at 13, when he and some school friends got into a fight with kids at a senior school and were beaten mercilessly. The pugilistic boy was sent to the prestigious Hale School in Perth, Australia, before studying commerce at Curtin University, filling the time by playing bass in a band and producing films and concerts for Indonesian diaspora.
Back in Indonesia he joined his father’s firm as a trainee, and was sent on his first day to the port with a stack of cash. His job was to hand out a 1,000 rupiah note bonus (about 10 U.S. cents) to each worker carrying a load of shipment.
He was upset to see an elderly worker carrying a heavy load, and wanted to give him 5,000 rupiah, but the manager stopped him, saying his action would be detrimental for the company. When the old man wholeheartedly thanked him for the tiny tip, Sudharta realized how privileged he was. He vowed never to take it for granted again.
“It was a big slap in my face,” Sudharta, now 37, said in a conference room with a broken red sofa in Halodoc’s offices in Jakarta. “That changed my life.”