MEMG, Beenext Lead $2.1 Mn Seed Funding For Digital Therapeutics Startup Wellthy Therapeutics

Mumbai-based digital therapeutics healthtech, Wellthy Therapeutics, has raised $2.1 Mn in Seed funding from Dr. Ranjan Pai’s family office MEMG (Manipal Education and Medical Group), along with Beenext Ventures, GrowX Ventures, Currae Healthcare and other strategic HNIs like Ashutosh Taparia and Karan Bhagat.

Founded in 2015 by  Abhishek Shah, the startup was largely self-funded until this Seed round.

Speaking about the development, Abhishek said, “Digital health interventions are a necessity to enhance the effectiveness of current chronic disease care. Our product suite directly boosts outcome efficacy in incredibly significant ways, well beyond what current healthcare is able to do. This fund-raise will help us continue to pioneer a new category of medicine that will revolutionize chronic disease care across Asia.”

Wellthy Therapeutics will be using the funding to enhance the efficacy of its type II diabetes digital therapeutic services while developing solutions for other disease areas and build deeper integrations with healthcare stakeholders across South Asia and Asia.

A portion of the funding will also be utilised to expand Wellthy Therapeutics’ team.   

Dr. Ranjan Pai, CEO and Managing Director, MEMG added, “Globally and in India, chronic diseases have become the largest burden on healthcare. Wellthy Therapeutics’ product suite has the potential to be the glue that binds healthcare providers, insurers, pharma and diagnostics one step closer to better patient outcomes.”

The MEMG CEO iterated that the investors were motivated to pursue the funding round due to the early data of Wellthy’s type II diabetes digital therapeutic and they hope that the solution suite by Wellthy Therapeutics will elevate the standard of care for multiple therapy areas.

As an aftermath of the funding round, Siddharth Dhondhiyal on behalf of MEMG and GrowX Ventures, will be joining Wellthy’s board as the investor representative.

Wellthy Therapeutics has been working on clinical pilots and gathering real-world evidence of its solution capability since the last two years. The startup has graduated from the Merck Global Digital Health accelerator, Swiss Re’ Global and ICICI Lombard’s Nova InsurTech accelerators.

It uses a hybrid of artificial intelligence and human paramedical coaches to improve health literacy and facilitate behavior change for better outcomes in patients. It’s first digital therapeutic for type II diabetes has been endorsed by Asia’s largest diabetes association, Research Society for the Study of Diabetes in India (RSSDI).

Wellthy Therapeutics has been collaborating with medical insurance firms, clinics and the allied pharma industry to build deeper integrations with industry stakeholders in Asia as also expand its team.

The resulting progress in the healtech industry is a continuation of the peak in the interest of the investors showed in 2017. The Indian Tech Startup Funding Report by Inc42 Media stated that “healthtech is the new fintech!”. According to the report, healthtech startups raised over $333 Mn in funding in 2017 which is three times of 2016. In totality, healthtech startups have raised over $912 Mn across 269 deals since 2014.

Indian healthcare market, which is worth $100 Bn, is likely to grow at a pace of 23% CAGR to reach the mark of $280 Bn by 2020, as per a Deloitte 2016 report.

Since February, there has been in increase in the number of funding deals materialising in the healthtech startup industry.

• PharmEasy raised $30 Mn in Series C funding round from Bessemer Venture Partners and Orios Venture Partners, and from new investors such as JM Financials and MEMG
• THB raised $2.1 Mn funding from Blume Ventures and HealthQuad
• healthi, has raised $3.1 Mn in a funding round led by Montane Ventures
• CallHealth has raised about $7.8 Mn from BCCL (Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd.)
• MedGenome secured an additional $10 Mn funding from HDFC Ltd., HDFC Life and HDFC Asset Management to complete its Series C round of  $40 Mn, etc.

From the positive developments with which the healthtech industry has started this year, 2018 will likely see many more healthtech startups flourishing. The funding for digital therapeutics healthtech startups like Wellthy Therapeutics from the likes of MEMG is the beginning of many more disruptions to come in the healthtech industry.