OrbCare, a healthtech company based in Toronto, has announced the close of its seed funding round, raising $2 million in equity financing.
“One of our strategies is to prove to ourselves that we have a well-defined, operational company.”
The round was led by iGan Partners, a Toronto-based early stage healthtech VC, and saw participation from its network of co-investors, which were undisclosed. This marks the first round of funding for the company, and its total funding to date. The investment will go towards sales and operations and helping OrbCare increase its presence in North America, focusing on the US.
The company has developed software looking to fix inefficiencies that exist within the healthcare system. Orbcare’s platform includes features such as phone integrations, e-referral agents, and an AI chatbot called Orbie. The company markets its software to large medical practices including doctor offices, as well as enterprises. The software aims to cut down on time spent answering phone calls, requesting referrals, and calling patients to remind them about appointments.
“Orbcare is focused on aggregating data in the cloud from a multitude of endpoints,” the founder and CEO, Manny Abraham, told BetaKit. “We make use of its ability to use that to better service the operational efficiencies for individual practices, and the ability to return a greater ROI. That’s our goal.”
The company currently provides service in the US, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, and will soon expand to New Zealand. OrbCare works with several regional health organizations including the Canadian Mental Health Association—Peel region, Whitby Urgent Care Walk-in Clinic, and the Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority.
This round of equity financing, led by iGan Partners, is the first round of funding OrbCare has raised, although the company was founded in late 2013.
Abraham, who has been in the healthcare industry for almost 20 years, told BetaKit that the company wanted to build the business before raising funds or receiving too much public attention.
“One of our strategies of bootstrapping and operations is to prove to ourselves that we have a well-defined, operational company,” Abraham said. “We wanted to use our money, create the product, get it operational, build the business, and then use whatever means necessary to promote it.”
The founder was influenced by his experience during the dot-com boom and noted to BetaKit that the company intentionally wanted to stay “low key” until this funding round.
“The capital we have raised in this seed round, with the help of iGan, validates that we are on the right path to solving workflow inefficiencies that occur within medical practices. The goal is to alleviate the pressures that medical practices are under, to make quality care accessible,” Abraham stated.
Currently, OrbCare is not working with hospitals, but does have plans to expand its customer base in the near future. Abraham said the company is looking to raise another round of funding, either a bridge or Series A round, before the end of the year. This additional funding will go towards expansion into hospitals and community organizations.
Abraham explained that while OrbCare has been careful about the amount of funding it raises, large VCs in Canada and the US have been asking the company for additional capital and to open up the company to allow for more investment.
“We’ve kept it under wraps because personally, we wanted to get a better evaluation to raise capital,” he said. “We hit a certain threshold and then we started to rationalize it, and get some outside capital to grow our operations and market presence late last year.”
Featured image courtesy iGan/OrbCare.