Exclusive: Health-tech startup Medimetry raises seed funding

Medimetry, which offers an online platform for telemedicine, electronic medical records and disease management, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding led by US-headquartered hedge fund BlueSky Capital Management, a top executive told VCCircle.

BlueSky Capital Management is the parent of Exponential Innovation Fund-I, a Category I alternative investment fund registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and managed by investment advisory firm 3737 North Capital LLC.

Medimetry, which is operated by Arisun Internet Services Pvt. Ltd, will use the fresh capital for sales, marketing and to upgrade its digital disease management platform, said co-founder and chief executive Krishan Tyagi.

Apart from BlueSky, two individual investors he did not name also contributed to the round.

Medimetry was founded in 2016 by Tyagi, an Indian Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Management graduate, and his wife Bhawana. 

The company started out as an online doctor consultation platform that connects doctors with patients in real time. It is now building a digital disease management platform for chronic ailments.

The company is currently operational in Delhi-NCR and has 1,500 doctors on board with expertise in over 18 areas such as pediatrics, gynecology, psychology, cardiology, oncology, dermatology, sexology, psychiatry and general medicine. It claims to have catered to more than 100,000 customers till now, of which around 40% have come from rural areas.

"We are investing in Medimetry that is changing the Indian healthcare experience, through its on-demand telemedicine capabilities aided by robust disease management protocols,” said Bhavish Sood, managing partner at BlueSky Capital Management. 

Sood, a general partner at 3737 North Capital, will now join the board of Medimetry.

“Indian healthcare needs digital transformation to address gaps in accessibility, availability, affordability, and quality of care," said Pankaj Gupta, venture partner, healthtech and biotech, at Bluesky Capital. “Hence, we are focused on digital models of care including e-prescriptions, metadata and data standards (MDDS) for health standards-based interoperability, and standard clinical protocol-based disease management.”

Exponential Innovation Fund-I 

Launched last year with the aim of raising $50 million, the 3737 North Capital-managed Exponential Innovation Fund-I seeks to invest in fintech, health-tech, enterprise software and ed-tech companies. 

It will also opportunistically invest in agri-tech and clean-tech and will primarily focus on business-to-business (B2B) ventures, Sood had told VCCircle last year.

The venture capital fund‘s first local investment was in Revvlocity, which operates in the inside sales space.

It made its second bet in a Pune-based tech-backed data-driven backpacking hostel chain.

Deals in the space

There has been considerable funding activity in the broader health-tech space of late. 

On Wednesday, VCCircle reported that Gurugram-based Bright Lifecare Pvt. Ltd, which runs omnichannel health products store HealthKart, was raising close to $10 million (Rs 73 crore at current exchange rates) in a fresh funding round from new and existing investors led by Sequoia India.

In September, online drug stores PharmEasy, Myra and NetMeds all raised venture capital investment.

Technology is increasingly playing a role in widening the healthcare net.

Earlier this month, panellists at News Corp VCCircle's Healthcare Summit 2018 said that the future of healthcare in India lies in the adoption of digital technologies that will enable quality care to be extended to consumers in smaller cities and towns.