Alpha Wave, Aspada, Others Back Healthcare Startup Even

The new investors will join existing investors Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Lachy Groom, Palo Alto Networks chief Nikesh Arora, Cred CEO Kunal Shah, and DST Global partner Tom Stafford.

With the fresh capital, the company is looking to expand personalized and preventive care in India. Even is looking to strengthen its clinical team of highly experienced doctors to scale its preventive care for India’s growing comorbidities like diabetes, PCOS, and obesity, among others.

Founded by Mayank Banerjee, Matilde Giglio, Alessandro Ialongo, Even aims to simplify healthcare in India which poses unique challenges such as lower penetration of health insurance and fee-for-service care that puts a disproportionate financial burden on people.

“Upon onboarding and throughout a member’s journey, our doctors collect and study important information about members’ health and suggest ways to mitigate risks. Comorbidities like diabetes, high cholesterol, high BP, and obesity are quite common in India, and are often uncontrolled due to reluctance in visiting a doctor and not getting health checks unless there are symptoms. Just to set more context about how important this is, 50% of users found out for the first time that they had diabetes during our onboarding health check-up," said Matilde Giglio, co-founder, Even.

Even in a statement, India’s fee-for-service healthcare model effectively forces patients to go to the doctor only when an illness reaches a critical stage. In other cases, patients are advised by hospitals to admit themselves for 24 hours to become eligible for insurance payouts, which may or may not happen. Patients, hospitals, and insurers work in silos with different and misaligned incentives, creating huge mistrust at each stage of care.

The company said Even is building primary care programs using globally vetted protocols to improve clinical outcomes. This helps Even reduce OPD (outpatient department) costs and IPD (inpatient department) costs. Insurers are then more willing to cover a cohort whose health is meaningfully managed.