digital healthcare
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NewView Capital leads $22.3M Series B in Australian telehealth platform Eucalyptus
Telehealth platform Eucalyptus raised a $22.3 million Series B round of funding to build a digital health portfolio for primary care in Australia.
NewView Capital led the round with participation from existing investors Blackbird Ventures and W23, and new investor AirTree Ventures. As part of the investment, Ravi Viswanathan, NewView founder and managing partner, will be joining the Eucalyptus board.
The new round gives the Sydney-based company a total of $32.8 million raised since it was founded in 2019 by Tim Doyle, Benny Kleist, Alexey Mitko and Charlie Gearside.
Australia’s healthcare system is a two-payer model, where most of the care is paid for by the government, and there is a smaller insurance coverage that is owned by individuals. Eucalyptus fits into these models as a private-pay option selling directly to consumers. In some cases, the company is able to charge lower copays for care than the average $25 per doctor visit, Doyle told TechCrunch.
He touts the company as the “largest vertically integrated telehealth platform in Australia,” serving more than 200,000 patients across four demographic-focused brands: contraception and fertility, skincare, men’s health and sexual wellness. Each brand has its own core platform of healthcare providers, patient data repository, remote monitoring tools and partnerships with pathology labs and pharmacies.
All of that results in a higher touch and higher quality relationship between doctor and patient, Doyle said.
“We are seeing an opportunity to shorten the amount of time between identification of a condition and diagnosis,” he added. “We also want to go more in-depth into diabetes, heart conditions and mental health. People are dropping out of diabetes and mental care because there are not enough touch points that are easy to use. If we can build a hub, it will make it easier to treat those conditions.”
In addition to product development, the new funding enables Eucalyptus to build toward being a major player in the telehealth industry. The company will introduce new brands in the next year around chronic care like behavioral health, weight management and diabetes.
Eucalyptus grew its revenue between 200% to 300% year over year since 2019, Doyle said. This is not unlike other startups in the digital health sector, where 2020 saw another record year for venture capital investment. He expects similar growth in 2021, including adding about 20 employees to be over 100 by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, Doyle said he is excited to work with NewView, especially with Viswanathan and principal Christina Fa, who said Eucalyptus is proving that Australia can lead in digital healthcare.
“The team is impressive in terms of clarity of vision and execution, especially in the way they brought in people to manage the brands,” she told TechCrunch. “It is unique being based in Australia where they don’t have Teledoc and other digital health companies. Instead, Eucalyptus had to build all of that in-house and do the hard work upfront. In addition, they curated a network of health providers and four brands, each with their own personalities. This allows them to be fully vertically integrated and own the customer journey.”
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Digital elective care and telemedicine provider Ro raises $200 million at a reported $1.5 billion valuation
In three years Zachariah Reitano’s startup, Ro, has managed to hit a reported $1.5 billion valuation for its transformation from a company focused on treating erectile dysfunction to a telemedicine service for a range of elective and urgent care-focused treatments.
Through Rory for women’s health, Roman for men’s health and Zero for smoking cessation, Reitano and fellow co-founders Saman Rahmanian, and Rob Schutz, built a company that now treats 20 conditions, including sexual health, weight loss, dermatology, allergies and more, according to a statement from the company.
Image Credit: Zero
Ro also has a new pharmacy business, Ro Pharmacy, which is an online cash pay pharmacy offering more than 500 generic medications for just $5 per month per drug. And the company is getting into the weight loss business through a partnership with the private equity-backed healthcare company, Gelesis.
Ro’s also becoming a gateway into patient acquisition for primary care providers through Ribbon Health, and a test-case for the use of Pfizer’s Greenstone service, which provides certification that a generic drug is validated by one of the major pharmaceuticals.
The company’s $1.5 billion valuation is courtesy of a new $200 million investment from existing investors led by General Catalyst and including FirstMark Capital, Torch, SignalFire, TQ Ventures, Initialized Capital, 3L and BoxGroup. New first-time investor The Chernin Group also participated. In all, Ro has raised $376 million since it launched in 2017.
“This new investment will further our mission to become every patient’s first call. We’ll continue to invest in our vertically-integrated healthcare ecosystem, from our Collaborative Care Center to our national pharmacy operating system. This is just the beginning of Ro’s patient-centered healthcare platform.”
It’s all part of the company’s mission to provide a point of entry into the healthcare system independent of insurance qualifications.
“Telehealth companies like Ro are using technology to address long-standing healthcare disparities that have been exacerbated by COVID-19,” said Dr. Joycelyn Elders, MD, Ro Medical Advisor and Former U.S. Surgeon General. “By empowering providers to leverage their skills as efficiently and effectively as possible, Ro delivers affordable, high-quality care regardless of a patient’s location, insurance status, or physical access to physicians and pharmacies.”
Ro’s new financing is one of several forays by tech investors into reshaping the healthcare system at a time when patient care has been severely disrupted by attempts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
Digital medicine is assuming a central position in the healthcare world, with most consultations now occurring online. Reimbursement schemes for telemedicine have changed dramatically and investors see an opportunity to capitalize on these changes by aggressively backing the expansion plans of companies looking to bring digital healthcare directly to consumers.
That’s one of the reasons why Ro’s major competitor, Hims, is reported to be seeking access to public markets through its sale to a special purpose acquisition company for roughly $1 billion, according to Reuters.
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