Fintech startup for healthcare sector Care.fi on Monday said it has raised $2 million debt from venture debt firm Trifecta Capital and an additional $600k from TV Mohandas Pai’s Aarin Capital-backed impact-focused non-banking financial company (NBFC) UC Inclusive Credit. Care.fi, which aims to become a healthcare-focused small finance bank, enables supply chain financing for hospitals, pharmacies, manufacturers and suppliers in the healthcare sector.
Sidak Singh, Co-founder of Care.fi said the funds will be used to grow the company’s book size, with disbursals growing by 4x in the last financial year to $48 million.
“The journey is upwards only from here. Based on our understanding of the market and the pain points of the patients, we have seen that optimising the operational bit, especially for insurance at a time when patients are eager to wrap up payments and go home, is very important,” said Singh.
The company’s product CareCred allows hospitals to raise finance against their invoices along with real-time updates on payment dues and transactions. Hospitals can set up autopay to avoid manual repayment.
“We are going to deploy this funding across two major building blocks, i.e. expansion and growing the business and strengthening the team with fresh, relevant talent to achieve new milestones,” said Vikrant Agrawal, Co-founder, Care.fi.
The company has worked with over 50 hospitals and helped more than 2,000 patients with their claims, said Agrawal.
Importantly, spending on private healthcare, growing pharma manufacturing and services, and an evolving healthcare technology ecosystem are turning India into a private equity hub, according to a report by Bain & Company in January this year.
The county had likely hosted 22 healthcare deals with a marginal drop from 26 in 2022 while the deal value was expected to come in at $4.6 billion in 2023, just below the $4.7 billion in 2022, with India remaining the leader in deal value across the Asia-Pacific region.