Maternal well being startup Cayaba Care scooped up $12 million in a Collection A spherical led by Seae Ventures and Kapor Capital.
Different individuals within the spherical embody Wellington Companions, Citi Impression Fund and Rhia Ventures. Based in 2020, Cayaba Care launched in August with $3.2 million in seed funding.
WHAT IT DOES
The startup works with native suppliers and obstetricians to supply home-based or digital help companies for pregnant sufferers. They’ll be a part of on their very own or be referred to Cayaba, the place they’re arrange with a care navigator who can coordinate behavioral healthcare, lactation help, social service navigation and pressing care.
“We’re constructed to be type of a home-based extension of the follow, and to carry our workers members – we name them maternity navigators – into sufferers’ houses to assist handle among the scientific wants they may have, social determinants of well being wants and behavioral well being wants all inside their communities,” Dr. Olan Soremekun, CEO and cofounder of Cayaba Care, informed MobiHealthNews.
WHAT IT’S FOR
Cayaba plans to make use of the funding to rent extra staffers, enhance its know-how platform and develop into new markets. The corporate at present operates in Philadelphia and New Jersey.
Because the startup considers new cities, Soremekun mentioned Cayaba is seeking to construct partnerships with obstetricians and different suppliers in addition to payers and native well being departments.
“I feel we at all times begin with the inhabitants. We spend loads of time really being native to know these wants, assembly with key stakeholders. I simply frolicked in Mississippi and Jackson, and we met with mothers, OB suppliers, Medicaid companies,” he mentioned.
“And so there is a true dedication to really perceive what are the wants of these communities. As soon as we really feel that our resolution really matches in effectively, the subsequent step within the course of is to actually align companions.”
MARKET SNAPSHOT
Maternal care within the U.S. lags behind different rich nations, leading to worse outcomes for moms. In accordance with the CDC, 861 ladies died of maternal causes in 2020 in contrast with 754 in 2019. The maternal mortality charge is sort of thrice larger for Black ladies than for white ladies.
Extreme maternal morbidity, or outcomes from labor and supply which have important short-term or long-term results on the mom’s well being, elevated almost 200% between 1993 and 2014, largely pushed by the necessity for blood transfusions.
Different tech-enabled firms that purpose to enhance maternal healthcare embody Mahmee, which introduced a $9.2 million Collection A final week; Babyscripts, which added one other $7.5 million to its Collection B in November; and Ovia Well being, which was bought by diagnostics large Labcorp final 12 months.
“We began this journey two years in the past. We acknowledged that there was simply such a necessity,” Soremekun mentioned. “I feel the investments which might be occurring in maternal well being are only a recognition that we have underinvested in such a essential, essential life occasion for a big a part of the inhabitants.”
