At-home lab test company Everlywell raises $175M

The company got FDA approval for its COVID test earlier this year, will sees sales quadruple in 2020

Despite now being many months into the COVID crisis, we're still not doing enough testing. There are less than one million COVID tests being performed every day, less than half of the 2.3 million that the Association of American Medical Colleges has determined is needed to contain the virus. Meanwhile, there has also been a surge in demand for testing, most likely due to the holidays and people wanting to make sure they're healthy enough to see their families.

Basically, what the pandemic has done is exposed the inequities and problems in the testing space. And that's exactly that at-home health testing company Everlywell, which announced that it raised $175 million in Series D funding on Thursday, is trying to fix.

The company, which developed the first in-home coronavirus test in March, before getting FDA approval in May, took funding from new investors that include funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, The Chernin Group, Foresite Capital, Greenspring Associates, Lux Capital, Morningside Ventures, and Portfolia. Existing investors Goodwater Capital, Highland Capital Partners, and Next Coast Ventures also participated.

This is the second round of funding that Everywell has raised this year, taking a $25 million round in February, and it brings the company's total capital raised to over $250 million.

In addition to its COVID test, Everywell provides at-home testing for over 30 conditions, including food sensitivity, STDs, cholesterol and lipids, HPV, thyroid conditions, Lyme disease, and fertility, among others. 

Tests can be currently purchased in 49 states; the only one it is not currently available in is New York, due to testing regulations. Results are typically available in five business days, and the company sends an email notification when results are ready, or they can also be viewed in the patient's Everlywell account. More than one million people have used Everlywell's lab kits, which includes free shipping, as well as physician-reviewed results and insights that are sent to directly to the user's device, since it launched in 2016.

The pandemic has been a boon for companies in the virtual care and telemedicine space in 2020, and Everlywell is no exception: the company's total sales are projected to quadruple this year, with sales of most of its tests growing by over 100 percent year-over-year. Everywell attributes this, in part, to the expansion of its retail footprint; its tests are now available in 10,000 locations, including at Target, Walgreens, CVS, and Kroger stores. 

On top of that, the company also closed over 100 deals with workplaces, universities, clinics, and government offices in 2020; it now has partnerships with diagnostics firms, including Exact Sciences, as well as with major health plans such as Humana. 

The company plans to use the new funding to expand its virtual care offerings and scale its testing and infrastructure.

"The pandemic has shed light on the challenges of lab testing for Americans, from unknown costs to confusion and inconvenience. We've been empowering people with a new way to get tested for five years and will continue to lead the way in a rapidly expanding space," said Julia Cheek, Everlywell's founder and CEO, said in a statement.

"We believe lab testing will be rapid, simple, and coupled with virtual care in the near future. This partnership with additional world-class investors enables us to build a transformative, multi-generational digital health company that puts people first - where they belong."

(Image source: everlywell.com)