HealthEngine announced on Tuesday that it has raised AU$26.6 million in a Series C round led by Sequoia India, who is joining existing investors Telstra Ventures and Seven West Media on the company’s board.
Alium Capital and some high net worth family offices participated in the round, as did existing investors including Go Capital, Lux Group managing director Adam Schwab, and founder of Carsales Greg Roebuck.
The latest round brings the total amount raised by the Perth-based healthcare appointment booking company to more than AU$50 million.
HealthEngine said it will use the funds to expand its headcount, which currently sits at about 100 across its Perth, Melbourne, and Sydney offices, as well as for investment in product development. The funding will also support expansion into international markets through acquisitions, the company said.
“This investment announces HealthEngine’s arrival on the global startup scene, hopefully putting us on a similar trajectory to many of Sequoia’s other successes — iconic companies like Apple and Google and more recently startups like WhatsApp, Stripe, and Airbnb,” said Dr Marcus Tan, co-founder and CEO of HealthEngine.
Tan founded HealthEngine in 2006 with co-founder Adam Yap. At the time, it was an online healthcare directory, but evolved over the years into a booking service and marketplace.
From a consumer perspective, HealthEngine is a free-to-use, online booking portal that allows patients to book healthcare appointments any time of day.
For healthcare practitioners, HealthEngine is a more efficient alternative to phone bookings, freeing up front desk staff to focus on other tasks, while also filling up last-minute cancellations.
Tan admitted the healthcare sector has been slow to adopt some of the advances Australians have become accustomed to in other industries.
“Healthcare is a long-fuse, big-bang type market. It takes a long time to get anything happening because it’s such a conservative industry. The fact a marketplace like ours is still solving these issues tells you the sector is a bit behind, but that doesn’t make the tech less interesting,” he told ZDNet.
HealthEngine, which competes against the likes of 1stAvailable and MyHealth1st, claims it is being used by about 1 million Australians and 70,000 practitioners.
