Maternal well being startup Cayaba Care scooped up $12 million in a Sequence A spherical led by Seae Ventures and Kapor Capital.
Different contributors 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 providers 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 form of a home-based extension of the follow, and to carry our workers members – we name them maternity navigators – into sufferers’ houses to assist tackle a number of the medical wants they could 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, advised MobiHealthNews.
WHAT IT’S FOR
Cayaba plans to make use of the funding to rent extra staffers, enhance its know-how platform and increase into new markets. The corporate at the moment 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 lots of time truly being native to know these wants, assembly with key stakeholders. I simply hung out in Mississippi and Jackson, and we met with mothers, OB suppliers, Medicaid businesses,” 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 truly matches in properly, the subsequent step within the course of is to really align companions.”
MARKET SNAPSHOT
Maternal care within the U.S. lags behind other wealthy countries, leading to worse outcomes for moms. Based on the CDC, 861 ladies died of maternal causes in 2020 in contrast with 754 in 2019. The maternal mortality charge is sort of thrice increased 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, increased nearly 200% between 1993 and 2014, largely pushed by the necessity for blood transfusions.
Different tech-enabled firms that goal to enhance maternal healthcare embody Mahmee, which introduced a $9.2 million Series A final week; Babyscripts, which added another $7.5 million to its Series B in November; and Ovia Well being, which was purchased by diagnostics giant 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 are occurring in maternal well being are only a recognition that we have underinvested in such a vital, vital life occasion for a major a part of the inhabitants.”
