Kenko Health, a Bengaluru-based healthtech startup, has secured $12 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital India. Existing investors — Beenext, Orios, 9Unicorns and Waveform — also participated in this round.
Founded by Aniruddha Sen and Dhiraj Goel in 2019, Kenko Health provides a subscription-based service that covers health expenses across out-patient department (OPD) and hospitalisation.
The investment will primarily be used to acquire customers, develop new products and add more categories such as dental, mental health, at-home care and sexual health to its OPD coverage.
The health insurtech startup's Series A funding comes at a time when the pandemic has made people realise that conventional health insurance packages remained un-utilized in the long-run as they fail to cover OPD expenses.
India's out-of-pocket expenditure on doctor fees, medicine expenses, diagnostic tests and even non-prescription products, is among the highest in the world at nearly 62 percent, according to World Bank. In China, the figure stands at 35 percent.
"At Kenko Health, we bridge this gap by providing an overall protection to our customers through complete financing as well as assistance,” said Dhiraj Goel, co-founder, Kenko Health.
Given the health gap in non-metro cities, Kenko's plans are designed for middle-income and small-city households who are not covered by standard health insurance schemes, either by their employers or otherwise.
In collaboration with insurance companies, the startup offers monthly plans, ranging from Rs 299 for individuals to Rs 1,999 for a family of four. It also offers healthcare plans for large businesses and SMEs.
“Managing health care expenses needs to be reimagined in India... Kenko Health is at the forefront of this change by offering affordable all-inclusive healthcare subscription packages with a seamless tech-first claims process,” said Abhishek Mohan, Principal, Sequoia India.
Currently, Kenko Health has over 50,000 users across 40 cities in India. With fresh capital, it wants to expand the user base by five times, with a target of 2.5 lakh new users by end of March, 2022.
“Kenko has identified a huge white space in the healthcare finance space, overlooked by incumbents for years with innovation in OPD as well as a refreshing take on health benefits settlement," said Anup Jain, Managing Partner at Orios Venture Partners, which co-led the startup's $1.7 million pre-Series A round with BEENEXT.
(Edited by : Bivekananda Biswas)
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