Saverin-Backed Health Startup Seeks Funds at $250 Million Value
(Bloomberg) -- CXA Group, a Singapore-based health service backed by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, is again hitting up investors. Founder Rosaline Chow Koo said her startup intends to start a new round of funding to try and raise at least $50 million at a $250 million valuation.
The goal is still for CXA to achieve profitability mid- to late next year and unicorn status -- or a valuation of $1 billion or more -- within three years, Koo told Bloomberg’s Sooner Than You Think conference in Singapore. The company is seeking funding in the wake of securing long-term contracts with insurers and other customers, she added.
“We have to go for another funding round,” she told the conference on Thursday. “We’re going back out only because we’ve signed very long-term contracts to actually be white-labeled by these firms globally.”
CXA is the brainchild of Koo, a female entrepreneur who grew up poor in Los Angeles and started the business in 2013 as a personalized employee health and wellness benefits platform. The company now serves more than 600 companies and more than 400,000 employees in 20 countries.
Revenue increased 65% in 2018 and is expected to double in 2019, Koo has said previously. In March, CXA raised $25 million by selling convertible debt to investors including HSBC Holdings Plc, Singtel Innov8 and Telkom Indonesia MDI Ventures. Prior to that, the startup had raised $33 million from two previous financing rounds.
People in Asia are getting hit with chronic diseases earlier than in the West so they need flexibility in how they manage health-care costs, Koo has said. Her company allows employees to shift their traditional insurance money -- typically used for illness, injuries or death -- to combat these chronic diseases or to get mentally or physically healthier.
CXA then tailors benefits to each individual’s life stage by using machine learning technology. The employees can use their e-wallet in the mobile app to select service providers and spend their allowance instead of getting one-size-fits-all benefits.
Read more: First-Time Female Founder Nabs $25 Million to Expand Health Site
(Updates with Koo’s comments from the third paragraph.)
To contact the reporters on this story: Yongchang Chin in Singapore at ychin22@bloomberg.net;Yoolim Lee in Singapore at yoolim@bloomberg.net;Derek Wallbank in Singapore at dwallbank@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Katrina Nicholas at knicholas2@bloomberg.net, Edwin Chan, Colum Murphy
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