During their messy dispute, the investors were forced to intervene. They froze the company’s assets, including the funding.
Vault Dragon has had a tough road to success. It seemed the Singapore-based startup could not catch a break; their idea was copied by Chinese competitors, their co-founders split after an ugly dispute, almost all their employees left at the same time.
However, it has now managed to establish itself as digital healthcare data startup, calling themselves the “leading clinic management system provider in Southeast Asia”.
According to Tech in Asia, the local company says this year it’s projected to make S$1.4 million in revenue, more than double as compared to last year, based on current contracts with customers.
Who are they?
Vault Dragon sells a software suite, an electronic medical record (EMR) program for healthcare providers to digitise and manage their patients’ records. Clinics can store records electronically and scan existing patients’ hardcopy records into the system.
Deal Street Asia reports that in February 2017, the startup has secured a S$1.64 million investment in the pre-Series A round from Golden Equator Capital and Raging Bull.
Things have not been very easy for Ching Tse Tseng, the remaining founder of Vault Dragon.
Ching was a new entrepreneur who quit his consultancy job to join the JFDI accelerator program.
Back in 2013, Vault Dragon started off as a “Dropbox for physical things”. It was a convenient storage solution for those who needed to declutter, and it could be managed digitally. Customers book through an app and a staff member would come down to store your things in a box and put it in a warehouse.
First Nightmare
After getting a S$1.35 million funding in the seed round in September 2014 from Jungle Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures, and 500 Startups, Vault Dragon expanded to Hong Kong — but that’s where the nightmare began. The company did not progress as the business idea was too easy to copy. Within a month, Chinese competitors emerged and priced their services much lower.
“And they’re only focusing on Hong Kong. For us, We’re burning on both ends – Singapore and Hong Kong,” Tseng told Tech in Asia.
He then turned Vault Dragon into an EMR provider, a business that was harder to invite tons of competitors. The company took six months to sign the first two doctors. Once they did, everything took off quickly.
Vault Dragon felt that while convincing healthcare providers to join would be hard, they would be very loyal customers.
The company would collect a clinic’s medical records in boxes, scanning all their patients’ medical information using a digital imaging process, and all records will be digitised and instantly retrievable. According to them, medical records processed through Vault Dragon have also been certified under the Singapore Evidence Act. This means that the information are presumed authentic, accurate and reliable, and are admissible in Singapore’s courts as primary evidence.
Messy Co-founder Dispute
The next wave of problems came in the form of a bad dispute between Ching and co-founder Vishesh Mittal. They apparently did not see eye-to-eye on certain issues.
Vishesh Mittal and Ching Tse Tseng. Source
“We were both very young and pretty naive about how things should be,” Ching said.
According to Asian Entrepreneur, Mittal, with 15 years of experience in web and app development, was in-charge of technology development at Vault Dragon. Ching, an ex-PwC business consultant specialising in business process management, drives the business development side.
During their messy dispute, the investors were forced to intervene. They froze the company’s assets, including the funding and the source code, and all progress halted. Clients left.
Their employees got demoralised and six of them tendered in six consecutive days.
Everything that was happening at the same time was a hard hit for a startup, but it still did not kill Vault Dragon.
Ching said seeing them go hit him hard.
In the interview with Tech in Asia, he said, “I failed my company, I failed my employees, I failed my investor. They put their faith in me to run a company, and I couldn’t live up to their expectations.”
Mittal moved on to start a direct competitor, Plato Medical. Leaving Ching stuck with source code he knew nothing about.
Getting back on their feet
Ching had then lost a vital part of his team. Gradually, he rebuilt his entire company, from engineers to tech. Sales then tried to get customers again.
It seems despite all the setbacks, Vault Dragon is on track to success again. Currently, the company has gotten over 60 clinics, medical chains, and multinational corporations on board their EMR software.
According to Techseen, the startup claims it can scan more than 2,000 patient records per day. All medical records scanned by Vault Dragon are stored securely on Singapore’s Amazon Web Service (AWS) local data center.
Last year, it did not have any loss of clients. Its operating margin stands at 63 percent. 90 percent of its revenue now comes from its medical business. The smaller 10 percent comes from storage solutions, Vault Dragon’s original business, but they no longer advertise that.
Vault Dragon also provides an annotation platform called Klinify. It allows healthcare providers to use traditional pen and paper to continue writing notes and drawing diagrams, while also creating digital records of that.
“We backed Vault Dragon because it has so thoroughly addressed the complications that come with adopting digital systems in a clever way that means little or no change to the established workflow in clinics,” said Ivan Lee, Founder and Chairman of Raging Bull, who sold the Thai Express chain for S$98 million.
Support from the local government
Vault Dragon aims to make it easier and more affordable for medical clinics to comply with Singapore government regulations to keep medical records for at least six years; The Singapore government backed the startup’s solution.
The company was then approved as a vendor of SPRING Singapore’s Collaborative Industry Projects program. The government subsidises up to 70 percent of a business’s cost of adopting Vault Dragon.
Vault Dragon wants to make transferring patients’ medical records from clinic to clinic more seamless. Right now, you pay various admin fees to print your records and transfer it to another practitioner. With the EMR system, patients can also spot their health trends by comparing previous records. Data can be taken, while still remaining private, and analyzed to benefit Singapore’s healthcare system.
Transparency is key
Ching has also structured his startup unlike any other: Everyone’s salaries and commissions are disclosed within the company; Everyone has access to the company’s revenue and cost figures.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Because I’m the solo founder now, a lot of times, I get blindsided by myself. It’s very important that if I ever step out of line, [the team has] to let me know,” he explained.