San Francisco-based Forma, previously called Twic, announced its $40 million series B round of funding on Tuesday alongside a company rebrand. The rebrand is intended to reflect the company’s evolution and focus on pairing employees with customized benefits.
Ribbit Capital led the Series B round with prior investors participating: AngelPad, Designer Fund, Emergence Capital, and Upside Partnership. Further, angels also participated in the round: Tobias Lutke, founder and CEO of Shopify; Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb; and Jack Altman, co-founder and CEO of Lattice. To date, Forma has raised $57.5 million. The company manages $500 million in benefits budgets annually for more than 125 companies, which includes the likes of Zoom, Twitch, and Stripe.
Forma plans to use the $40 million in funding from this Series B to build more products and services quickly, said Jason Fan, CEO and co-founder of Forma in an email. The goal is to develop its employee-choice concept to cover more categories. Additionally, the funding will facilitate Forma’s goal of doubling its workforce by the end of 2023 to more than 500.
Specifically, Forma benefits span six categories: basic health and protection, education and career, family and relationships, money and health, wellness and lifestyle, as well as work and performance. Within these categories, employees get to choose from a large marketplace of 250 products from Forma vendors. Employees get 10-30% savings from the retail prices by using this marketplace. Forma manages the contracting, renewal, payments, sign-up, fulfillment, and shipping.
Further, the company offers an intelligent card, like a visa card, that employees can use to shop. The startup also has a reimbursement claims function in its platform through which employees can purchase and use benefits like a consumer.
“We are one of the earliest companies to focus on flexibility in the benefits industry. While there are a few startup companies entering the market, most of our customers tell us that we are up against legacy processes that companies have had for decades,” Fan said. “Forma radically streamlines program administration and vendor integration across HR and finance teams, making flexible benefits easy to manage and delightful to experience.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Forma’s two co-founders: Jason Fan (left), CEO and co-founder; and Max Hsieh (right), CTO and co-founder.
Though the company declined to disclose its valuation and revenue, it claims to have experienced growth. For example, Forma’s revenue increased four-fold in 2021 and five-fold in 2020, according to Fan, adding that its customer base grew 330%, too. Current headcount has reached 135 employees, said Fan. And by the end of 2022, Fan hopes that number will reach 250.
Photo: drogatnev, Getty Images and Forma
