- Health startup Roon is elevating $15 million at a $65 million pre-money valuation, BI has realized.
- Sequoia, an present Roon investor, is about to take part within the spherical.
Health info web site Roon is elevating a brand new funding spherical, Business Insider has realized.
The startup is elevating $15 million at a $65 million pre-money valuation, based on two folks conversant in the efforts.
Existing investor Sequoia Capital has recommitted to the funding spherical, based on these folks.
Roon goals to exchange “Dr. Google” with its web site and app for shoppers to ask their well being questions and get professional solutions.
The firm beforehand raised a $7.5 million seed spherical in 2022. Firstmark, TMV, and Sequoia Capital led the spherical, with SV Angel, Maveron, and M13 collaborating.
Terms of the deal are usually not finalized and could possibly be topic to vary. Roon and Sequoia didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Roon pitches itself as a “trusted information for well being” on its web site. The firm gives accessible medical info to customers and companions with skilled medical professionals to reply particular medical questions on customers’ well being journeys.
Currently, Roon’s web site says it may assist sufferers navigating fertility and household constructing, dementia, the neurological illness ALS, or the mind most cancers glioblastoma multiforme.
The firm initially started by offering medical info on glioblastomas, sourcing specialists on the precise situation earlier than increasing to further subjects, per TechCrunch. Roon additionally presents to attach customers with different folks experiencing related well being situations.
Roon CEO Vikram Bhaskaran, a former Pinterest govt, based Roon in 2021 after struggling to seek out accessible details about his family members’ medical situations. He partnered together with his former Pinterest colleague Arun Ranganathan, who serves as Roon’s CTO, and Rohan Ramakrishna, a skilled neurosurgeon and Roon’s chief medical officer.
Today, professional well being info is not at all times straightforward to seek out with a easy Google search. Patients might flip to sources like WebMD, boards like Quora, and even social media for recommendation on their situations — with unsurprisingly unreliable accuracy.
AI platforms, corresponding to Perplexity and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are more and more changing into a useful resource for medical questions as nicely. However, there have been considerations across the reliability and accuracy of those platforms’ outputs.
Consensus, a search engine that helps folks parse scientific papers, raised a $11.5 million Series A led by Union Square Ventures in July to sort out an analogous market.
Roon goals to distinguish itself with its give attention to “medically vetted” info, Bhaskaran advised TechCrunch in 2022.
“There’s a lot medical misinformation… it is loopy that sufferers haven’t got anyplace to go to reply questions,” he mentioned.
