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For most of human history, we interacted with healthcare the same way. We got sick. We saw a doctor. We were told what to do. The model was reactive, episodic, and largely offline. That is changing, slowly in the West and globally.
Two models we are tracking that point toward what comes next.
The first is direct-to-consumer digital medicine (Hims & Hers, Ro, Numan), which proved that patients would seek care online for stigmatized, chronic, and lifestyle conditions if the experience was discreet, fast, and affordable.
The second is proactive health optimization (Superpower, Function, Levels, Lifeforce), which demonstrated that consumers would pay for personalized, data-driven health management before they got sick.
&you combines both, and this was the thesis in a round we co-led, with returning investor Everywhere Ventures. It is also one of the health models we laid out in “What we are backing in health”, where the Hims model sits alongside our bets in Brazil, the US, and Poland.
Why Southeast Asia, why now
Southeast Asia’s healthcare market is one of the last major digital frontiers. Transportation, fintech, e-commerce, logistics: all have been fundamentally transformed by technology. Healthcare has not. In a region of 700 million people, the dominant model is still offline clinics, paper records, branded drug imports at 2 to 5 times Western prices, and access concentrated in capital cities.
The irony is that the region’s consumers are ready. Smartphone penetration runs 75 to 90% across major markets, digital wallet adoption is among the highest in the world, and a median age of 24 to 31 across the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia means a population onboarded into e-commerce since COVID. The barrier is not consumer readiness. It is supply.
Two realities amplify the opportunity. The region faces a real metabolic health crisis, with obesity rising sharply and demand for weight management surging alongside. And the current market response is dangerous: black-market medications, illegally imported, repackaged, and mixed with unknown fillers, sold through Facebook groups and unregulated aesthetic clinics. The absence of a trusted, regulated alternative is not a market gap. It is a public health problem.
This is where &you enters. Not as another telehealth app, but as a regulated, vertically integrated health platform designed to be the safe and credible alternative.
As Emil has put it: “Walking into a traditional clinic can feel like stepping into a time machine. The technology exists to make healthcare convenient, accessible, and dignified. Filipinos deserve that. They deserve world-class health-tech.”
&you today
&you launched in the Philippines in April 2025 and reached profitability before raising its pre-seed. Within six months it raised over $1 million in a round co-led by Fluent and Everywhere Ventures. The launch wedge, GLP-1 weight management, is now one of several verticals alongside hair, skin, sexual health, hormone optimization, and longevity. In January it launched Labs by &you, a once-a-year panel of more than 100 biomarkers, which is the Function Health half of this thesis arriving on schedule.
Four reflections from the &you journey
1. Trust is the product, not a feature. In Western markets, the DTC health model competes on brand, experience, and cost. In Southeast Asia there is a prior battle to win: trust. The black-market drug ecosystem is the dominant supply chain for the categories &you operates in, and consumers have legitimate reasons to be skeptical of what they put in their bodies. Compliant, physician-supervised compounding with verified formulations is rare in the region. Where the alternative is an unknown product from an unnamed supplier, being the regulated, medically supervised option is not a feature. It is the product.
2. Credibility has to be earned in two directions at once. The team assembled its trust stack deliberately: Dr. Quincy Raya setting clinical protocols; a former Meta executive running performance marketing in restricted health verticals; Kylie Verzosa as Brand Director and investor; and Roland Ros, co-founder of Kumu, who knows how Filipino consumers build relationships with digital platforms. Medical authority and cultural resonance, earned simultaneously, is a combination that is hard to replicate.
3. Build like a camel. In my book Out-Innovate, I argued that the most durable companies in frontier markets are not unicorns. They are camels: profitable early, careful with resources, built to survive the boom-and-bust cycles that define those environments. &you reached profitability before its pre-seed, a rare discipline in digital health, where most DTC companies burn aggressively to acquire early customers.
As Emil puts it: “Others raise funds to survive. We raise funds to accelerate.” The path from pre-seed to regional scale in Southeast Asia is long and non-linear. Regulation shifts, trust takes time, and every new vertical needs clinical investment before it pays back. Profitability first is not a constraint on ambition. It is what makes regional ambition achievable.
4. Order of operations is the moat. Emil did not come to healthcare with a technology product looking for distribution. He built the compliance infrastructure first, assembled the medical credibility layer deliberately, and reached profitability before accepting outside capital. That sequencing is unusual in venture-backed health companies, and it is the reason we believe &you can navigate a path that others will not survive.
The broader thesis
&you is one expression of a broader thesis we are developing at Fluent: functional health, built in the markets where it has not yet been built. The category has been validated. Demand exists across Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa. The regulatory and infrastructure gaps that blocked earlier entrants are closing. We expect the next five years to produce a generation of regional health platforms that look nothing like the fragmented clinic networks of today, and everything like the integrated, consumer-first health companies that have scaled in the US and Europe. The founders who win will build like camels: sustainable enough to outlast the obstacles, and fast enough to own the category before the competition arrives.