We will be talking about funding today. We all are aware of the disastrous impact COVID 19 bought on the economy. Many businesses and startups had to shut down their operations because of the lack of funds and no customers in the market.
Everyone was stuck and locked inside their homes and the national and states borders were all closed, not allowing any movement. This was witnessed for the first time that there was no one on the roads, they were empty. But the year 2021 has been a lucky one, we have already 25 unicorns till the month of August and it is expected that this year will see the birth of many new unicorns.
One of the important and noticeable trends which can be witnessed is that the technology has started to play an important role now. We also saw that only those startups which operate on technology or have the technological platform were able to function during the lockdown period, and only such startups are moving further. Investors find these types of startups attractive and future oriented and invest heavily in them.
About funding
The funding we will be talking about is of the Digital Healthtech startup- Breathe Well-Being. The startup as announced on August 24, 2021, has received a funding of USD 5.5 million which is almost equal to INR 40 crore. This round of funding was the Series A round and was led by Accel, an American venture capital firm.
This round of funding also saw the participation from other investors like General Catalyst, 3one4 Capital, and the global managing director of Tiger Global ( a New York-based investment firm)- Scott Shleifer. This round also saw the angel investors of the startup receiving 30X return on exit and also the ESOP buyback for a few early employees.
Before this round of funding, the startup had raised USD 1 million in the pre-Series A round of funding, which was led by 3one4 Capital, in June 2021. Many angel investors had been a part of that funding- Suhail Sameer, CEO of BaharatPe, Rajesh Sawhney(GSF Ventures), Stanford Angels, and Ashish Gupta, MD of Helion. The startup also participated in the winter 2020 of YCombinator. The startup is planning to use the funds raised in building out product development facilities and expansion of the team across various functions.
About the newly funded startup
The startup was founded in 2020 by the ex-McKinsey employee Rohan Verma who is a certified CrossFit L2 trainer and mindful coach and an ex- Accenture employee Aditya Kaicker, who is an ACE certified behaviour health coach. They both are the former founders of ClassHop.
The startup is under the parent company of Aurogreen Health Pvt Ltd, is enaged in helping people move towards healthy life and reduce the risk of chronic diseases. The services offered by the satrtup are directed towards small and medium organizations through a holistic well being program with an aim to reviatlise the mind and body of employees. The well being programme of the startup uses gamification and an integrated reward platform to help in driving engagement and connectivity among the employees.
Through the mobile application, the employees get an opportunity to participate with each other in different types of activities and track their personal health statistics. The employers can aslo track the impact the programme has made through a proprietary index.
The startup also offers a digitally programme which has been clinically proven and which uses the approach of personalized coach driven and community first in order to help people with Type 2 Diabeties and help them in reducing blood sugar levels, lose weight and helping them to eventually stop medicines.
The startup has made the claim that the Breathe’s Diabetes Reversal Program has shown amazing results and made more than 95% of the patients showing HbA1c reduction of more than 10%, and more than 90% of the patients have completey stopped or reduce medicines. The future plans of the startup are to provide digital therapeutic solutions to other diseases like PCOS, hypertension, gut disorders, and many others.
The programs of the startup have helped the more than 10000 members in reducing of weight, blood sugar, and prevent many health complications. The startup is there as a partner in building long term healthy habits. The startup has the experienced coach, Seema Goel, who has the 19 years experience in Dietetic Counselling with various famous and prestigious organizations.
About the founders
Rohan Verma is the co-founder and the CEO of Breathe Well-Being. He has done his undergraduate in electronic and entrepreneurship from Nanyang Technological University Singapore. He was engaged in running a education focused technology venture and then spent 3 years at McKinsey and company.
He was also a strategy consultant across seven sectors doing finance, strategy, operations, sales, and organization work in Nomura. He is a crossfit Level 2 trainer and a mindful coach and has the understanding of the well being space and leads strategy and business development at Breathe Well-Being. He is an avid reader and performs at spoken word events.
Aditya Kaicker is the co-founder and COO at Breathe Well-Being. He has done his undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering from UCLA. Post his graduation, he worked for 5 years in Accenture and PA consulting in New York, where he focused on Technology Consulting in Healthcare and Life Sciences. He is a certified health coach and leads the Product, Technology, and Content Team at Breathe Well-Being and is responsible for creating four pillared well being program. He is interested in Football, travlling, reading, and deep-sea diving.
What does the startup say?
The startup made a statement saying that the country has the base of 200,000 specialist doctors, there is a huge need of a tech platform which is efficient and can help patients in managing and treating their conditions with very less medication.
The CEO of the satrtup, Rohan Verma said that the startup is focusing on making the patient experience wonderful by expanding their technology platform, strengthening their medical and coaching academy, community protocol, and game design. He further said that this funding will help the startup in increasing the hiring and marketing efforts. He even notified that the startup will be hiring aggressively not only for core operations, but also for other departments.
The Indian healthtech market is growing rapidly and is expected to reach USD 21 billion by 2025, where as the pledged healthcare market has been USD 638 billion in 2025. This sector in the first four months of 2021 has raised 30% more funding than teh entire 2020. The sector is on the track and the startup is doing great and has something new to offer. We wish it luck and a bright future.
Edited by Sanjana Simlai.
