Blume Ventures backs health-tech startup HealthAssure

By Joseph Rai

  • 09 Jul 2019
Credit: 123RF.com

HealthAssure Pvt. Ltd, an online aggregator of primary healthcare services, said on Tuesday it has raised $2.5 million (Rs 17.15 crore) from early-stage venture capital firm Blume Ventures in its Series A round of funding.

The company will use the funds to boost its data capabilities by leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning tools and create new products, it said in a statement.

HealthAssure, founded by Varun Gera in 2011, has tie-ups with hospitals, clinics, laboratories, doctors and insurance companies to offer healthcare schemes for corporate employees. It claims to have a network of more than 4,000 primary care centres across 1,100 cities on its platform.

The health-tech startup had raised $1 million in a pre-Series A round in March last year from human resource ventures-focused private investment firm The HR Fund. It had earlier raised capital from investors including serial entrepreneur Rajul Garg.

Before launching HealthAssure, Gera was the CEO of UnitedHealthcare India. He has also worked at GE Money and ICICI Bank.

The health-tech segment has continued to record robust deal activity in the past few months. According to a VCCircle survey, health-tech is the most-favoured sub-domain for investments by venture capitalists after fintech.

Earlier this month, Bengaluru-based health-tech startup mfine raised Rs 31 crore from venture debt firm Alteria Capital.

Last month, VCCircle exclusively reported that venture debt provider Trifecta Capital had offered to invest Rs 70 crore in Practo Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Similarly, mental health-focussed artificial intelligence-based chat platform Wysa raised Rs 15 crore in a pre-Series A funding round led by pi Ventures last month.

The homegrown venture capital firm was founded in 2010 by Karthik Reddy and Sanjay Nath. It is looking at a final close of its third fund, after making the first close at $40 million in October last year.  

It had plans to invest 35-40% of its new fund in segments such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, analytics, software-as-a-service, blockchain, security, robotics and Internet of Things.

Overall, the VC firm has invested in more than 100 startups. Its health-tech investments include clinical research and data analytics startup THB and diabetes management app BeatO.