Healthcare navigation platform HealthJoy has gained $60 million in series D funding, raising more than $108 million total, the company announced Thursday.
Chicago-based HealthJoy — which serves primarily employers, as well brokers and third party administrators — offers a mobile platform that helps connect employees to their benefits. It also has a concierge team to answer questions when needed.
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
The funding round was led by Valspring Capital. Other investors of the company include Endeavour Vision, CIBC Innovation Banking and U.S. Venture Partners.
Valspring Capital chose to invest in HealthJoy because it fights a major pain point in the healthcare benefits space: minimal understanding of the available benefits for employees, said Aneesha Mehta, co-founder of Valspring Capital.
“We’re thrilled to invest in HealthJoy and accelerate their impressive platform growth. As users of healthcare technology ourselves, we genuinely identified with a core issue that HealthJoy fights: a serious lack of benefits awareness that leads to under-utilization by employees,” Mehta said in a news release. “Offering a solution that simplifies benefits is a key differentiator in the talent war the market currently finds itself in. We look forward to amplifying HealthJoy’s solutions as we’ve seen the value they bring firsthand.”
HealthJoy will use the financing for continued growth, said Justin Holland, CEO and co-founder of the company. Additionally, it will work to advance and innovate its technology offerings, he added.
“Our focus is profitability with this financing round and that’s going to come through growth and continued investment and innovation,” Holland said in an interview. “So we’ll continue to grow in basically all of our teams, but we know where we’re going to get the most leverage is within our innovation stack. [We’re going to] keep ensuring that our technology team is well equipped to keep tackling this incredibly challenging problem.”
A merger or acquisition is not something HealthJoy is considering right now, Holland said. However, he did not provide additional detail about the company’s exit strategy.
“If we’re fortunate enough at some point where it makes sense for that, we could have that be a new challenge we tackle,” he said. “But today, that’s not on our mind.”
The company’s app begins with a chatbot called JOY, which can answer questions and direct them to specialists if needed. The app includes services like medical consultations, assistance in finding local providers and medical bill reviews.
“Today, HR and the broker have basically built their own virtual network of services … The issue is engagement into those products and that’s a huge burden for HR and the broker to actually deliver on the strategy across those,” Holland said. “That’s where we really see what HealthJoy’s job is. How do we make delivering on the health plan strategy as a whole easier for HR and the broker?”
When founded in 2014, the platform was initially intended for consumers, but switched to employers in 2016. It now serves more than 1,000 companies, including LendingTree, Bustle and Vivint.
Other companies in the healthcare navigation space include Accolade, Quantum Health and Alight.
Photo: HealthJoy
