Bangalore-based telehealth startup MFine announced it has raised US$16 million in an oversubscribed funding round led by Heritas Capital, with participation from Singapore-based family office of Y’S Investment.
Existing investors, including SBI Investment (Japan), SBI Ven Capital and Beenext (both Singapore-based), and Alteria Capital (India), also participated.
The company said in a statement that it will deploy the fresh funds towards investing in its tech solutions, expanding its hospital network across India and scaling its recently launched services, which include medicine delivery, preventive health screenings and diagnostic tests.
MFine further said it it will also initiate its Series C fundraising in the “coming months”.
Founded in 2017, MFine is an AI-driven, on-demand healthcare platform that provides its users access to virtual consultations and connected care programmes from India’s hospitals.
Lockdown measures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the release of telemedicine guidelines by India have led to the widespread adoption of telemedicine within the country.
MFine claims it achieved 10x growth in 2020 and has more than a million users with over 4,000 doctors from 600 hospitals covering 35 specialities on its platform. The startup expanded its geographical coverage and remarked it now serves people from over 1,000 towns in India.
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The firm launched several new services in 2020, including an AI-based self-assessment of various health conditions, long-term care programmes for chronic conditions and membership to offer benefits on all the services for its direct consumers and also corporates.
“The year 2020 has been very significant for us. During the pandemic, with the introduction of strict lockdowns and social distancing measures, we found ourselves in a unique position to help millions of people with access to essential healthcare services,” said Prasad Kompalli, Co-founder and CEO of MFine.
“MFine has developed a compelling solution that has proven to be highly impactful during this pandemic to ensure continued and trusted access to quality and affordable healthcare services,” said Chik Wai Chiew, CEO and Executive Director of Heritas Capital.
“We believe MFine’s collaborative partnership model with hospitals and doctors powered by the application of AI will enable smart optimisation of limited healthcare resources to address unmet needs throughout India and beyond,” Wai Chiew opined.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has increased global funding activity in digital health in 2020. Telemedicine was the top-funded category and led VC funding activity with US$4.3 billion, a 139 per cent increase compared to US$1.8 billion in 2019.
According to Mercom Capital, global venture capital funding in digital health came to US$14.8 billion, a 66 per cent increase compared to US$8.9 billion in 2019.
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