Kindbody looks to create an end-to-end solution for women's health

The company, which has clinics in NY, SF and LA, raised funding last week from GV

While funding for women's health startups has traditionally lagged behind, it has recently started to boom, with $177 million raised across 10 deals in the third quarter of this year. Funding for the space increased more than 8x from 2014 to 2018, and that was also the first year that saw 30 percent of women’s health deals be a Series B round or later, meaning startups are starting to mature. Femtech is finally starting to come into its own.

Yet, of course, problems still remain, said Joanne Schneider, co-founder and Head of Product at Kindbody, which provides fertility, gynecology, and wellness services in tech-enabled clinics.

"The problems we are addressing with women's healthcare today are, one, a fragmented and sterile experience, two high and opaque costs, and, third, variation of outcomes," she told me.

"At Kindbody, we provide fertility, gynecology, and wellness services in modern, tech-enabled clinics. We combine full-service care with accessible pricing and welcoming spaces. Our medical team is experienced and empathetic, and our technology enables them to make data-driven decisions and deliver a seamless patient experience."

Kindbody's first clinic launched in August of 2018 in New York City, and it has since added clinics in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The company was founded by Schneider and Gina Bartasi, the founder and former CEO at Progyny, a provider of accessibility to doctors, price transparency, and financing. That company went public in October and is now valued at $2.3 billion.

The Kindbody platform has three components: KindEMR, which includes a practice management system, CRM, medication adherence and decision support. The platform also provides the KindPortal, which has telemedicine, personalized care plans and medication instructions, and at-home video tutorials. Finally, Kindbody's data and analytics platform provides real-time KPIs and research.

For its members, the company offers services such as fertility testing for $300, nutrition coaching for $200, counseling and support for $200 and return-to-work coaching for $160; its prices are about 40 percent lower than industry averages in the cities it operates in, Schneider explained.

In April of this year, the company launched its employer solution, which has now grown to 15 customers.

While Kindbody has competitors in the PE rollups space, such as Prelude and Integramed, those companies "are conventional clinics with no brand, no technology, with very high costs," said Schneider. Kindbody also competes with benefits brokers, like Progyny and Carrot, "but those are unable to affect patient experience or outcomes or cost." 

Last week, Kindbody announced it raised funding from GV and other investors, bringing the total amount raised to $32 million. The new funding will go towards "expanding our footprint to serve employer customers looking to provide fertility benefits to their employees." That will mean adding locations in its existing three markets, as well as expanding its Centers of Excellence network of partner clinics.

"Certainly fertility has only recently become a hot space but very little innovation has happened on the provider side at the point of care. We are a true vertically-integrated solution: we own the provider, the data, and the tech," said Schneider.

"We want to create the world's first vertically-integrated, end-to-end women's health solution."