MFine raises $16 million in funding from Heritas Capital, others

Health-tech startup MFine on Monday said it has raised $ 16 million (about ₹117.1 crore) in funding led by Heritas Capital.

The round also saw participation from the Singapore-based family office of Y'S Investment Pte Ltd as well as from existing investors, including SBI Investment, SBI Ven Capital, BEENEXT, and Alteria Capital, a statement said.

MFine has achieved 10x growth amid exponential adoption of telemedicine and digital health in India in 2020, it added.

"With this fresh funding, MFine plans to reinforce its leading position in delivering an AI-driven, on-demand healthcare service across India, and aims to be one of the largest virtual hospitals in the world with services across primary care, secondary care, and chronic care management in collaboration with its trusted partners," the statement said.

MFine will deploy the funds towards tripling its investments in AI, mobile engineering, and device integration; and expanding its hospital network across the country, it added.

The funding will also be used to scale up MFine's recently launched services like delivering medicines, preventive health screenings, and diagnostic tests.

The company will also initiate Series C fundraising in the coming months, the statement said.

MFine had raised $ 17.2 million in series B in 2019. To date, it has raised $ 44 million.

The company, however, did not disclose details around valuation.

With over 4,000 doctors from 600 reputed hospitals covering 35 specialities on the platform, MFine provides users with on-demand access to quality medical care.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, more than one million users have utilized MFine's platform to teleconsult with doctors on chronic conditions such as diabetes and arthritis and acute illnesses, including viral infections, and for varying services such as diagnostics, health checks, radiology, and e-pharmacy, the statement said.

"The year 2020 has been very significant for us. During the pandemic, with the introduction of strict lockdowns and social distancing measures, we found ourselves in a unique position to help millions of people with access to essential healthcare services," MFine co-founder and CEO Prasad Kompalli said.

MFine is seeing incredible traction on the provider and consumer side, he added.

"Our vision of digital health as a solution to scale quality healthcare delivery has been accelerated by 2 years. The entire ecosystem is now on an accelerated transformation with the Indian government also introducing the National Health Stack. India is on the cusp of redefining healthcare delivery and we are actively engaged in shaping and leveraging this big shift," he said.

In 2020, MFine expanded its geographical coverage beyond the physical boundaries of the cities to serve people from over 1,000 towns in India and launched several new services such as AI-based self-assessment of various health conditions, long term care programmes for chronic conditions and membership to offer benefits on all the services for its direct consumers and also corporates.

"We believe that MFine's collaborative partnership model with hospitals and doctors powered by the application of AI will enable smart optimization of limited healthcare resources to address unmet needs throughout India and beyond," Heritas Capital CEO and Executive Director Chik Wai Chiew said.

Yoshitaka Kitao, Representative Director and Chairman of SBI Investment, said the firm sees huge potential in MFine's AI and mobile technology platform and its ability to scale beyond India as COVID-19 has accelerated the use of telemedicine and digital health in India and other regions in South East Asia.

COVID-19 pandemic has supercharged global funding activity in digital health. In 2020, telemedicine was the top-funded category and led VC funding activity with $ 4.3 billion, a 139 per cent year-on-year increase compared to $ 1.8 billion in 2019, the statement said.

Global venture capital funding in digital health came to $ 14.8 billion, a 66 per cent increase compared to $ 8.9 billion in 2019, the statement said, citing a Mercom Capital report.