Nelson Morales

Hair loss, erectile dysfunction and obesity treatments get digital

Article (news)

Salve Ibaňez

ABS-CBN News

Our ANC Business Outlook guests arrived at the studio with what I now suspect was a secret pun list.The topic: digital healthcare delivery for three of men’s most stigmatized conditions—erectile dysfunction, hair loss, and obesity. The game: who among my co-anchor Ron Cruz and myself would crack first. When GoRocky co-founder Kiyanusch Braun said something to the effect of “this was just the tip of the iceberg,” I felt the challenge land. I kept a straight face. Huh, I won? Barely. After the show, Kiya confessed he’d been watching us both, waiting for the first laugh. It was, actually, a brilliantly human way of approaching something genuinely serious. Because even in the C-suite—maybe especially in the C-suite—erectile dysfunction, hair loss, and obesity are the topics that live in the silence between meetings. Who has it, who doesn’t, what are they quietly doing about it. This was precisely why Kiyanusch Braun and Joaquin Palaña launched GoRocky in 2022. Their proposition was simple: what if getting treated for the things Filipino men are most embarrassed about required nothing more than a four-minute questionnaire and a discreet package at the door? No waiting room. No eye contact with the receptionist. A licensed physician’s review, a valid prescription, medicine delivered. Three years later, GoRocky has served over 30,000 patients—“closer to 35,000,” Kiya murmured after the cameras stopped rolling—across GoRocky for erectile dysfunction, GoFuller for hair regrowth, and GoSlim for physician-supervised weight management. They’ve just closed a $2 million seed round led by Singapore-based Integra Partners and local firm Kaya Founders. That’s P116 million in fresh capital aimed at a far bigger target: chronic disease.Obesity. Diabetes. Hypertension. PCOS. <div>The Secret Sauce </div>Unlike the large telehealth incumbents, GoRocky had to crack something harder than technology first: shame. Both founders were candid about the fact that the patient population is self-medicating with suspicious supplements off TikTok and random websites. This is not just a waste of money. It’s dangerous. Regulation was the part of our conversation that impressed and sobered me in equal measure.Building at the intersection of medicine, technology, and e-commerce in the Philippines means navigating the Food and Drug Administration, the Professional Regulation Commission, the Data Privacy Act, and evolving DOH telehealth guidelines—simultaneously, on a startup’s budget and a startup’s timeline.  I’ve heard founders complain about regulation before, but I sensed something deeper in the studio that day. That tension doesn’t resolve easily. And it shouldn’t. But somebody has to sit inside it and build anyway. <div>The VC Drought  </div>The $2 million round is a milestone—but context is everything. Global digital health VC funding hit $10.1 billion in 2024, according to Rock Health. That sounds robust until you remember the peak years of 2021 and 2022, when capital was almost embarrassingly available. Today’s investors are disciplined, skeptical, and have seen enough Southeast Asian health startups flame out.  In a quick debrief after the interview, both founders confirmed what the numbers already suggested: funding remains genuinely hard to find. The glory days of venture capital haven’t returned, and nobody serious expects them anytime soon. I could almost picture the pitch deck revisions, the late nights, the conversations that went nowhere.  But once the right investors say yes, doors open—and Integra Partners saying yes in this climate is a signal worth reading carefully. It means GoRocky’s patient acquisition costs, revenue per user, and retention metrics survived the kind of scrutiny that sends weaker models home early. <div>Three Years From Now </div>When I pushed them on numbers, the founders pointed to a 10x growth target, plans to build their own compounding pharmacy, and a full app rollout still to come.  GoRocky started with a conversation that millions of Filipino men, frankly, refuse to have. Whether P116 million is enough to prove that same quiet, patient, stigma-dissolving approach can take on the country’s biggest killers—that answer is coming. Probably sooner than 2033. Oh, and one last thing: how many puns did you count?<div>Boardroom Tea comes out every Wednesday.</div>

Their proposition was simple: What if getting treated for the things Filipino men are most embarrassed about required nothing more than a four-minute questionnaire and a discreet package at the door?

Their proposition was simple: What if getting treated for the things Filipino men are most embarrassed about required nothing more than a four-minute questionnaire and a discreet package at the door?

Boardroom Tea: Hair loss, erectile dysfunction and obesity treatments get digital

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Boardroom Tea: Hair loss, erectile dysfunction and obesity treatments get digital

Salve Ibaňez,

ABS-CBN News

Published Feb 18, 2026 10:00 PM PHT

|

Updated Feb 27, 2026 11:01 AM PHT

Read More:

telehealth

VC

venture capital

GoRocky

erectile dysfunction

men's health

hair loss

obesity

Salve Ibañez

Boardroom Tea

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