Healthtech Starbem has just raised another R$5 million in a Seed round. The funds from Brazilian angel investors will be used to expand the team and other strategic areas, such as technology and marketing, in addition to boosting the business's national and international expansion. As a result, the startup expects to close 2023 with R$10 million in revenue.
In total, since 2020, when it was founded at the height of the pandemic, Starbem has raised approximately R$10 million. According to co-founder and Global CEO, cardiologist Leandro Rubio, the sector is booming, but lacks proposals with a global impact. “This round brings an even greater focus to our business plan for Brazil, but also to Starbem's global expansion. It is a very booming market, since the demand for healthcare, especially mental healthcare, has increased a lot recently,” says Rubio.
Recently, Starbem was the only healthtech selected — among 1,600 applicants — to participate in Canada in the Toronto Accelerator 2023 edition of Techstars, one of the largest startup accelerators in the world. With its participation in the program, the company began its operations in North America, with a priority focus on providing online psychological care to the large number of Latinos living in the United States, a market with more than 60 million potential patients.
In Brazil alone, the company currently has more than 230,000 active users and 96 client companies, in addition to partners such as Gympass, TotalPass, laboratories from the A+, Dasa, Labi Exames, Sabin and Hermes Pardini groups and the drugstores Drogasil and Droga Raia, with benefits that exceed 20% in discounts.
Comprehensive health
Available for Android and iOS, the Starbem app offers more than 15 specialties in its easy-to-use application. These include general medicine, urology, psychology and even psychiatry and nutrition, which are less common in services in the sector.
“We believe that health is not about isolated symptoms and that prevention comes before cure, as popular wisdom says. Having this mindset and seeking solutions like Starbem brings several benefits to companies, since research shows that healthy employees are more engaged, but, above all, it benefits people both inside and outside their work environments. We see this in the feedback from Starbem psychology users, with 93% of them responding that they were satisfied with our service and 98% reporting an improvement in their mental health”, concludes Rubio.
