Telemedicine
startup Nurx recently closed a $36 million funding round led by Kleiner
Perkins. As part of the investment, Kleiner Perkins General Partner Noah Knauf
is joining the startup’s board of directors, along with Chelsea Clinton .
With this
new funding, CEO and co-founder Hans Gangeskar said that the startup
plans to scale its clinical teams, pharmacies and geographic reach in the
coming year.
“We have a
new site in Miami where we have a team of nurses being on-boarded, [we’re]
building out our engineering and design teams and really just [working to]
increase the pace of everything that we’re doing,” Gangeskar said.
The startup
launched in 2014 with the goal to make reliable access to contraceptives as
easy as opening your web browser. After plugging your information into its
online app, users are connected with physicians, given a prescription and Nurx
prepares their product for delivery.
Since its
launch, this California-based startup now operates in 17 states, and has expanded
its products to include not only contraceptives (such as pills, patches,
injectables and products like Nuva Ring) but the anti-HIV medication PrEP as
well. Gangeskar says the company is also preparing to launch an at-home lab kit
soon for HIV testing.
For
Gangeskar, creating affordable access to contraceptives is a first step to
changing how patients interact and receive medication from their physicians.
“Birth
control is one of the fundamental functions of any health care system [so] for
us its a natural place to start,” said Gangeskar.
To help
advance its plans to redefine this space, Gangeskar says Nurx is excited to
welcome public health veteran Chelsea Clinton to its board.
“Her
experience in public health and global health from the Clinton Global
Initiative has been really valuable, [particularly learning about] rolling out
preventative services in large scales, because really that’s the potential of
our platform — [to reach] populations that can’t be reached by the conventional
medical system.”
While
Washington looks to make cuts to American’s healthcare access, startups like
Nurx offer a fresh perspective on this critical space.
Comments