Hyderabad Health Benefits Startup Raises USD 3.6 mn

Hyderabad-based health benefits startup, ekincare has raised $3.6 million in a Series A funding round led by a new investor, with participation from existing investors including Ventureast, Eight Roads and Touchstone.

With a pre-series A round last year, the latest round takes the total funding raised by ekincare to $5.6 million. The funds will be used to strengthen ekincare’s technology platform, business development, marketing and expand its portfolio of offerings in the corporate health benefits market.

ekincare today caters to more than 200 companies including multiple Fortune 500 clients and managing over 3,00,000 employees health on their patent-pending platform. With ekincare, organisations can administer their health benefits efficiently, improve outcomes and reduce healthcare costs by up to 25 per cent.

The corporate health market size in Asia Pacific was valued at $4.5 billion in 2018 and is expected to register a CAGR of 9 per cent over the next 10 years as per a report by Transparency Market Research. In India, corporate health is on an uptick with the rise in annual health insurance premiums, inflation in healthcare costs and trending loss ratios at 107 per cent. More than 40 per cent of companies have a budget of over Rs 1,000 per employee for health benefits beyond medical insurance, as per the report published by PeopleMatters.

“Healthcare services industry in India is broken and full of disconnected parts,” said Kiran Kalakuntla, CEO and founder, ekincare. “Our patent pending technology recognizes patterns across disparate health data sets, discerning differences between consumer segments and behaviours to engage people better.”

On the platform, ekincare offers preventive health services like telemedicine, e-pharmacy, health checks, vision and dental care, access to gyms, and other services for every individual, through a personalised journey on the platform.

Competing with the likes of Welltok, CXA Group, VirginPulse, ekincare wants to be the health benefits platform of choice across South Asia in the near future.

“We have seen tremendous growth from our initial investment in ekincare, both in terms of patient-engagement, employers adoption as well as revenue growth. Hence through this round of investment we reinforce our commitment to support ekincare management team in their vision to build a world class healthcare platform,” said Srikanth Sundarajan, partner at Ventureast.-Telangana Today