Tech maternity clinic Millie has raised $12 million in Collection A funding to increase its choices and footprint, the startup introduced Thursday.
San Francisco-based Millie gives miscarriage administration, lactation help, psychological well being counseling, prenatal schooling, postpartum help teams and gynecological care. It has a collaborative care mannequin that features midwives, doulas and physicians, and care is supplied just about by way of its app and in bodily clinics (although its care is presently restricted to these in California). The corporate additionally companions with well being techniques and accepts each industrial well being plans and Medicaid.
Millie’s Collection A spherical was co-led by TMV and Foreground Capital and included participation from Pivotal Ventures, March of Dimes Innovation Fund, Ingeborg Investments, BBG Ventures, Joyance, LearnStart, Amboy Avenue Ventures, Mom Ventures, Coyote Ventures and Chai Ventures.
“We consider Millie has constructed the best mannequin to drive higher outcomes: midwifery-led, powered by each clinician and patient-facing know-how, in partnership with well being techniques and payers. Not solely is that this transformative for maternal well being however there’s a big upside potential as Millie builds a longitudinal relationship past the maternity episode,” stated Emma Silverman, accomplice at TMV, in an announcement.
The financing will assist Millie open extra places and accomplice with extra well being techniques in California (although it plans to increase exterior of California sooner or later). The corporate can be increasing choices to help the broader reproductive well being journey, comparable to fertility assessments, stated Anu Sharma, founder and CEO of Millie.
“We give attention to maternity care, and sure, that’s what we do rather well and wish to be well-known for,” she stated in an interview. “However we view ourselves actually, I might say, as a girls’s well being firm for the reproductive years.”
Sharma began the corporate on account of her personal challenges throughout the maternal healthcare system. Shortly after returning house following the beginning of her daughter, Sharma needed to diagnose herself with postpartum preeclampsia.
“I put myself in an Uber, leaving my daughter at house with my husband, went again to the emergency room and introduced on the verge of a stroke and fairly actually, ended up saving my very own life,” she stated. “It was simply a kind of mind-blowing moments. Right here I’m, someone who’s fairly healthcare literate, well-resourced, getting care in the most effective hospitals within the nation, not missing insurance coverage. I even had a doula. Nonetheless, I virtually died.”
Sharma isn’t the one one who has struggled with the damaged system. Greater than 35% of counties are maternity care deserts, in accordance with March of Dimes. The U.S. has a larger charge of maternal deaths than every other high-income nation. A number of different startups have emerged to deal with this concern as properly, together with Pomelo Care and Mae.
Finally, Sharma stated she goals to “have extra folks really feel properly supported as they make this journey.”
Picture: StockFinland, Getty Pictures
