Doceree Closes $11 Mn Series A Funding Round From Eight Roads Ventures, Others

Healthtech startup Doceree has completed its $11 Mn Series A funding round led by Eight Roads Ventures, a global investment firm backed by Fidelity. F-Prime Capital and Alkemi Growth Capital also participated in the round.

Doceree plans to use the funds to scale its global operations, expand partnerships, augment its product portfolio and advance the platform’s measurement and behaviour lift capabilities to bring greater transparency to results.

“Given we are a technology-driven platform, we will further invest on artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to make the product even more intelligent,” said Harshit Jain, M.D., founder and global CEO of Doceree to Inc42.

The funding will help Doceree to further strengthen healthcare professional (HCP) communications for pharma and life sciences brands, agencies and health information technology platforms, said the startup.

Founded by Jain and Daleep Manhas in 2018, Doceree entered the healthtech market with an aim to simplify marketing for pharma and medical devices companies by using the programmatic approach that works for content marketing and other social media targeting. 

Doceree has developed an identity resolution proprietary technology platform called ESPYIAN, which helps create a database of verified and authentic medical and healthcare professionals.  

“Our identity resolution technology and tailored products for different markets that adhere to the country-specific regulations and guidelines make it easy for pharma brands to engage with HCPs on digital mediums, while enabling publishers to improve engagement on their platforms with relevant medical information from pharmaceutical and life sciences brands,” said Jain.

This New Delhi-headquartered, New York-based startup has expanded to other international locations, such as emerging markets in the UK and Europe, within two years of the platform’s launch in the U.S.

It previously raised $1 Mn in seed funding in 2020, followed by a Pre-Series A round last year.

“We have been doubling our revenue every quarter, and this year the target is to achieve $20 Mn in revenue,” added Jain.

Talking about its latest investment in the startup, Ashish Venkataramani, partner at Eight Roads Ventures, said, “Pharma marketers navigate significant complexity across point-of-care systems and health information systems. Doceree’s technology platform seeks to disrupt the fragmented value chain for digital messaging to physicians, and will be at the forefront of this promising sector.”

Backed by Fidelity, Eight Roads Ventures manages $6 Bn of assets across offices in China, India, Japan, and Europe. It has previously invested in other healthcare companies in India including Ashish Life Science, Caplin Steriles, Carestack, Cipla Health, Core Diagnostics, ekincare, Eywa Pharma.

Doceree’s Position In Healthtech Space Post Pandemic

While the Covid-19 pandemic has shown how inadequate is the healthcare infrastructure in India, after the pandemic, healthtech has become one major sector to get a big push to revamp. In 2021, the startups in this sector received $2.2 Bn in funding across 131 deals, Inc42 reported.

To fight the newly-emerged virus, a number of blockchain startups such as Quillhash, Hipla, Aiisma, Tagbox, Yosync came up with novel methods for tracing and testing that were pivotal in the battle against the pandemic.

MFine launched MFine Pulse, an app-based SPO2 monitoring tool for users to track their blood oxygen levels using just a smartphone.

Startups including 1mg, PharmEasy, Healthians, MFine, Practo initiated at-home Covid-19 sample collection services for antibody, antigen and RT-PCR tests.

These are just a few names in the healthtech space in India that helped the sector get its long-needed attention after the pandemic.

For Doceree as well, the pandemic has been a game-changer, as Inc42 reported in 2020 when Jain had revealed that the startup was in the middle of raising a Series A round.

Talking about the post-pandemic effect on the broader sector, Jain told Inc42 today that two years was ample time for marketers to try, experiment, learn and perfect the medium, which eventually led to change their behaviour and adopt digital technologies for the long term.

“The acceptance of the medium in the industry has been unbelievably fast,” Jain added.

Doceree is also backed by serial entrepreneur and angel investors Rahul Gupta, pharma veteran Salil Kallianpur and more.