Bengaluru: mfine, a Bengaluru-based health-tech AI startup, has raised $17.2 million in Series B funding. The investment was led by SBI Investment, a Japan-based venture capital firm and a subsidiary of the SBI Group. Singapore-based SBI Ven Capital, SBI Group’s Southeast-Asian investment arm and tech-focused global venture capital firm BEENEXT, also participated in the round alongside existing investors, Stellaris Venture Partners and Prime Venture Partners.
mfine plans to use the funds to expand its hospital network across the country, build its AI technology and expand the recently launched additional services which include delivering medicines, conducting preventive health screenings and diagnostic tests.
mfine was founded in February 2017 by Ashutosh Lawania (Myntra co-founder) and Prasad Kompalli, a former business head at Myntra. The founders were later joined by Ajit Narayanan, ex-Myntra CTO, Arjun Choudhary, ex-Myntra head of growth marketing. Including the current funding round, the startup has raised over $24 million and has 200 employees in Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
Prasad Kompalli, CEO & cofounder of mfine said the current funding is “an endorsement to mfine’s unique model of working with reputed and accredited hospitals and using technology to make quality healthcare accessible to millions of people.”
mfine partners with hospitals instead of aggregating individual doctors on its cloud platform. Specialist Doctors from these hospitals are assisted by mfine’s artificial intelligence (AI) system, improving their efficiency & effectiveness dramatically. mfine’s care team of more than 60 in-house doctors work alongside the AI system offering best possible diagnosis and care. The AI engine has the ability to diagnose and triage over 1200 common diseases, read hundreds of health parameters in the diagnostic reports thus saving significant time for the doctors.
Over 100,000 customers have consulted on mfine in the last 15 months and its customer base is growing 30% month over month, claimed the startup in a press statement on Tuesday. It added that more than 500 doctors from over 100 reputed hospitals practice across 20 specialties on mfine.
mfine aims to be one of the largest virtual hospitals in the world with services across primary care, secondary care and chronic care management. In the next 12 months, it hopes to bring together India’s top 250 hospitals, from 10 cities with more than 2500 doctors onto its virtual hospital platform. The company will be simultaneously tripling its investments in AI, mobile engineering and hardware integration.
According to Tomoyuki Nii, Executive Officer of SBI Investment, “With an on-demand model and state-of-the-art AI and mobile tech, mfine stood out for us with great potential to deliver large scale impact in healthcare delivery in India.” Teru Sato, Founder & Managing Partner, BEENEXT, believes mfine’s product and user experience and the application of AI will help deliver large-scale impact in delivering healthcare.
Increased internet penetration, rise in digital payments and big-ticket government initiatives like Ayushman Bharat are bringing in venture capital investment in home-grown health-tech startups. Investments in Indian health-tech companies, according to Traxcn data, reached an all time high of $571 million in 2018.
[“source=livemint”]
