India’s Mfine raises $17.2 million to expand telemedical doctor network
Mfine, an AI health care startup headquartered in Bangalore, today announced that it has raised $17.2 million in a series B funding round led by Japan-based venture group SBI Investment, with participation from SBI Ven Capital, Beenext, Stellaris Venture Partners, and Prime Venture Partners. This comes after a $4.2 million series A round in May 2018 and brings Mfine’s total raised to $24 million, according to Crunchbase. CEO and cofounder Prasad Kompalli says the funds will be used to acquire new customers and expand service across India.
“We believe that India will leapfrog the methods of health care delivery that were adopted in the developed nations, and mobile will be at the center of this disruption. The current funding is an endorsement to Mfine’s unique model of working with reputed and accredited hospitals and using technology to make quality health care accessible to millions of people,” he said. “The consumer traction proves that our model works, and with this investment we want to scale the service across the country. We are delighted to have SBI and Beenext on board, as they share our vision of providing quality health care on-demand using AI and mobile tech.”
Mfine — which was founded in February 2017 by Kompalli and fellow former Myntra executives Ashutosh Lawania, Ajit Narayanan, and Arjun Choudhary — offers a cloud-based platform that provides hospitals an AI system capable of triaging over 1,200 common diseases, including chronic conditions such as diabetes and arthritis, by ingesting hundreds of health variables. Much like K Health, Heal, Doctor on Demand, and similar telemedical tools, Mfine’s smartphone app prompts patients to enter their symptoms, after which they select a care provider, chat with the provider over text or video (during which Mfine’s AI surfaces potentially relevant data and analysis), receive a prescription, and schedule a follow-up appointment.
Post-appointment, Mfine alerts users when they might be running low on a prescription and collates medical information like health reports, recent tests, and medical histories in a single dashboard. Meanwhile, partner hospitals gain access to a care team of more than 60 in-house doctors, in addition to products targeting oncology, cardiology, fertility, gastroenterology, dermatology, pulmonology, pediatrics, orthopedics, gynecology, and more.
Mfine claims that more than 500 doctors across 10,000 health systems and clinics are using its suite of tools, up 30% month-over-month, and it says it now reaches 800 towns in India. Ambitiously, it plans to expand to 250 hospitals in 10 cities within the next year and to onboard more than 2,500 doctors as it “triples” its investments in machine learning, mobile engineering, and hardware integration.
“Mfine’s product and user experience stood out for us. The application of AI to help deliver large-scale impact in delivering health care is game-changing,” said Beenext founder and managing partner Teru Sato. “Mfine has a very strong team, with the founders having deep technical knowledge and with the right vision and business model for building a large impactful business in India’s health care sector. We will continue to support companies like Mfine in India.”
Mfine has over 200 employees across offices in Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
Source: VentureBeat
