[Funding alert] Healthtech startup MFine raises $16M led by Heritas Capital

Healthtech startup mfine has raised $16 million in funding led by Heritas Capital. The round also saw participation from Singapore-based family office Y'S Investment Pte Ltd. Existing investors SBI Investment, SBI Ven Capital, BEENEXT, and Alteria Capital have also followed-on in the round.

A statement shared by Prime Venture Partners, an investor in MFine, state that the oversubscribed round wraps up a strong year for MFine with the company achieving 10X growth amidst exponential adoption of telemedicine and digital health in India in 2020.

The statement added MFine will deploy the funds towards tripling its investments in AI, mobile engineering, and device integration; expanding its hospital network across the country; scaling the recently launched services which include delivering medicines, preventive health screenings, and diagnostic tests.

The company will also initiate Series C fund raising in the coming months.

With this fund raise MFine plans to reinforce its position in delivering an AI-driven, on-demand healthcare service across India, and aims to be one of the largest virtual hospitals in the world with services across primary care, secondary care, and chronic care management in collaboration with its trusted partners.

ALSO READ

[Product Roadmap] How healthtech startup mfine is using AI to make virtual consults easier

Prasad Kompalli, Co-founder and CEO of MFine, said, “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. We are seeing incredible traction on the provider and consumer side. Our vision of digital health as a solution to scale quality healthcare delivery has been accelerated by two years. The entire ecosystem is now on an accelerated transformation with the Indian government also introducing the National Health Stack. India is on the cusp of redefining healthcare delivery and we are actively engaged in shaping and leveraging this big shift.”

MFine claims to have over 4,000 doctors on its platform of which 600 are top doctors from reputed hospitals covering 35 specialities. The platform has seen more than one million users since the outbreak of COVID-19.

The users have used the platform to tele-consult with doctors on chronic conditions such as diabetes and arthritis and acute illnesses including viral infections, and for varying services including diagnostics, health checks, radiology and e-pharmacy. 

The COVID-19 pandemic, subsequent lockdown measures and the release of Telemedicine Guidelines by Government of India have led to the widespread adoption of telemedicine in India. A new standard for digital health services including health IDs, personal health records, Digi Doctor and a health facility registry has also been announced in August 2020 under the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) to support universal health coverage for India’s citizens.  

“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. We believe that MFine’s collaborative partnership model with hospitals and doctors powered by the application of AI will enable smart optimization of limited healthcare resources to address unmet needs throughout India and beyond,” said Chik Wai Chiew, CEO and Executive Director of Heritas Capital.

In 2020, MFine expanded to over 1,000 towns in India and also launched several new services like 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.

“This is a great example of how mobile connectivity and advances in technology can aid in providing primary health care to millions of people. We see huge potential MFine’s state-of-the-art AI and mobile technology platform and its ability to scale beyond India as COVID-19 has accelerated the use of telemedicine and digital health in India and other regions in SEA,” said Yoshitaka Kitao, Representative Director and Chairman of SBI Investment.

According to the statement in 2020, telemedicine was one of the top-funded categories with over $4.3 billion invested in the space. It added that global venture capital funding in digital health came to $14.8 billion, a 66 percent increase compared to $8.9 billion in 2019, according to Mercom Capital’s annual report on funding and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity for the digital health sector for 2020.

“MFine has pioneered the access to top-class, trusted medical care in India. Despite 2020 being a difficult operating year, the MFine team has demonstrated its strong execution capability to add new capability, launch new offerings, accelerate traction while achieving strong economics. We are excited to continue backing the MFine team to create a large, world class healthcare company with deep positive impact,” said Teruhide Sato, Founder and Managing Partner of BEENEXT.