Vitalls takes $1.5m anchor cheque from Singapore's EST Growmore

Vitalls, a UAE healthtech startup, has secured a $1.5 million commitment from EST Growmore Pte. Ltd., the Singapore-based investment arm of EST Group. The sum makes EST Growmore the anchor investor in Vitalls' seed round, and the agreement carries an option for a further $1 million.

The deal was signed at the Abu Dhabi Future Health Summit by Mehdi Bouchenak, Vitalls' founder and chief executive, and Dr. Sindhu Bhaskar, chairman of EST Group.

One record, carried across borders

Medical histories usually sit in pieces: a lab result at one clinic, a prescription at another, a diagnosis recorded in a different country and a different language. The practical cost is familiar to anyone who has changed health systems. Tests get repeated because earlier results cannot be produced. Treatment waits while paperwork catches up. Clinicians work from a partial picture.

Vitalls builds an AI-powered digital health passport that holds a person's full record in one secure place the user controls. Records can be shared with any provider the patient chooses, under consent. The product is aimed at individuals and families who move between countries, and at employers managing mobile staff.

Bouchenak founded the company in 2023. The new capital is earmarked for developing the passport and rolling it out.

What the two sides said

Bouchenak called the agreement a major step for the company and said the money mattered less than what it confirmed: that the problem is real and urgent. An investor with Dr. Bhaskar's experience committing capital after close scrutiny, he said, signals that the need is understood. Patient-owned health records, in his view, are no longer a niche idea. They are where healthcare is heading.

Bhaskar said EST Group had studied the problem Vitalls addresses and is convinced by it. Millions of people live, work and travel away from home, he said, while their health records stay scattered across clinics and countries. Vitalls, in his framing, returns that history to the patient's control.

Distribution through the group

Beyond the cheque, the two companies will explore distribution, product development and strategic partnerships across EST Group's telecom and healthcare holdings. Vitalls gets access to the investment ecosystem around EST Growmore, including the group's portfolio companies in both sectors. Bhaskar said the group sees strong synergies across that ecosystem and intends to use the network to accelerate Vitalls' growth.

Why distribution decides this

A health passport is worth only as much as the number of clinics willing to read it. Building the record is the easier half. Persuading hospitals, laboratories and insurers in several countries to accept a file that originates in a patient's app is the harder one. That is where the partnership may count for more than the $1.5 million: EST Group's telecom and healthcare businesses already sit in front of patients and providers, and a passport routed through an existing customer base skips a slow and expensive path to market.

The rollout will be the test. The product depends on providers accepting records held by patients rather than by institutions, and on whether data can move between the markets its users travel across.