Healthtech Startup ekincare Secures $15 Mn From HealthQuad And Sabre Partners

Hyderabad-based healthtech startup ekincare has raised $15 Mn in a Series B funding led by HealthQuad and Sabre Partners with participation from existing investors Ventureast, Eight Roads Ventures, Siana Capital and Endiya Partners.

The startup intends to use the fund to deliver simplified health benefits and insurance experience to employers. 

Founded in 2014 by Kiran Kalakuntla and Srikanth Samudrala, ekincare is a personalised, full-stack customisable health benefits platform that helps employers design a health benefits package that best suits the needs of employees and their families. The startup currently serves around 1.5 Mn employees across 410 companies, as claimed by the startup.

ekincare’s annualised revenue run rate has grown 3.5x in the last 12 months. “Primarily, we are in a very sweet spot,” said Kiran Kalakuntla, cofounder of ekincare.

“We expect to grow by another 3x post this round. In a post-pandemic world, employee well-being has increasingly become the focal point of every employer’s strategy. Our patented platform considers behavioural data and uses it to personalise an employee’s health benefits journey, resulting in higher benefits adoption, employee engagement, and better health outcomes. The longitudinal depth of this information is helping payers underwrite health risks better, in turn making healthcare affordable for employers,” added Kalakuntla.

According to him, there are a new set of companies that have now started opening their wallets to engage more with employees. 

“Organisations are saving costs on real estate, cafeteria and transportation. The human resources department is struggling to engage with employees and health has dual benefits,” Kalakuntla said.

Sharing more details, Jagannath Samavedam, partner, Sabre Partners, said,“ekincare is looking to add 10,000 companies to its customer base by FY25. It has a strong management team and its comprehensive health benefits solution for SMEs, built on a strong foundation of integrated, cashless IPD & OPD network across more than 150 cities is gaining phenomenal traction and will further push their growth trajectory.” 

ekincare’s customer base includes Fortune 500 companies including S&P Global, Target, ThyssenKrupp, Allstate, as well as fast-growing startups such as Airbnb, XpressBees, Nykaa, Flipkart and various SMEs.

Funding In Healthcare Startups    

Healthcare startups such as Curelink, Proactive For Her, Heaps Health, Goqii, among others have also secured funding in the past couple of months. 

Gurugram based-healthtech startup Curelink raised $3.5 Mn in seed funding on March 17, 2022 led by Elevation Capital and Venture Highway. 

Goqii has raised $50 Mn in its Series-C funding round led by Sumeru Ventures in February this year. It is a mix of equity including preference share and debt investments. 

Last month, women’s outpatient healthcare Proactive For Her, secured $5.5 Mn in Series A funding led by Vertex Ventures South East Asia and India with participation from existing investor Nexus Venture Partners.

Corporate Health And Wellness Market In India

The corporate health and wellness market in India is worth $7 Bn and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20% by 2025, according to a study by Redseer. 

Coverage for pharmacy bills, diagnostics test, outpatient dental treatment and health check-up are some of the areas wherein companies are keenly looking at, the study said.

However, the market remains highly fragmented and employers often find it very difficult to work with multiple partners such as diagnostic centres, insurance companies and other healthcare firms. Only 15% of the country’s total workforce is covered under corporate health and wellness programmes, according to a report by RedSeer last year .

“A mere 15% of the total workforce is covered under such programs. About 405 Mn employees across sectors are still not part of such corporate programmes. This shows there is a long way ahead of such programmes. As there is a direct correlation between health and performance, organisations must look into ways to increase the reach of such programmes and how to move the needle on employee well-being,” it said.