Color Health Bags $100m in Series E Funding

Health tech startup Color Health has bagged $100 million in a Series E financing round, bringing the total that the company has raised so far to $378 million. This brings the startup’s valuation to $4.6 billion.

The funding round was led by Kindred Ventures and by certain funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., with participation by existing investors General Catalyst, Viking Global Investors, and Emerson Collective.

In January, Color closed a Series D funding, where it raised $167 million. 

The new financing will help Color Health offer new programs that deliver the last mile of care across healthcare services such as COVID-19 vaccines.

Offering new programs

Color is seeking to build on the infrastructure that it built since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The startup is currently running the largest COVID-19 testing program for K-12 schools in the nation and has supported more than 6,500 testing and 500 vaccination sites across the country.

A statement explained that Color was now working on building on its model to offer new programs that deliver the last mile of care across essential healthcare services. Color will begin this expansion in essential healthcare services and STI services, providing programs that help populations get access to screening, diagnostics, and initial treatments for a variety of health needs anywhere they are.

In addition, Color’s offerings will include vaccination and preventive health services for schools and employers, as well as infectious disease management programs for public health settings. The combination of existing offerings and new services expands the company’s work building public health tech and infrastructure for governments, employers, and other institutions that care for large populations, the statement continued.

“What we have built will serve as a critical piece of public health infrastructure to deliver access to healthcare services to those who need them most. We have learned that there is an exponential uptick in people’s ability to use these services as they become simpler and more convenient. Public health should happen where public life happens,” said Color CEO Othman Laraki.

In explaining the company’s approach, earlier this year, Laraki told valor.tv that the COVID-19 pandemic had exposed that the U.S. “literally [didn’t] have a public health infrastructure to speak of,” and there was a need to come up with a mechanism to be able to reach people and deliver basic services to them.

Partnerships

To make this happen, Color has partnered with public and private institutions such as Thermo Fisher Scientific, PerkinElmer, Salesforce, the Teamsters Union, the National Institutes of Health, the State of California, and the Executive Office of Health and Human Services of Massachusetts. 

Color’s infrastructure and software make it possible for large populations to receive essential healthcare services directly where they live or work. Color has partnered with nearly 1,000 organizations, including public health departments, universities, and employers to offer access to fast, reliable, and convenient healthcare services, the startup’s statement said.

“Color is poised to further transform how we deliver public health in this country with speed and at-scale. Just as we’ve seen digital transformations in other parts of our lives, the distributed network approach Color has built will improve the way we experience health care in the future. The hosted software and data infrastructure that Color provides has created a new normal: all essential care should be accessible, decentralized, and delivered within companies, schools, and communities instantly,” said Steve Jang, founder and managing partner of Kindred Ventures.

Color CFO Mike Herring said: “Color has built a strong, sustainable, and profitable business that can scale alongside the myriad of health challenges the U.S. faces. The response from our partners has been incredibly positive, and our remarkable team has delivered at scale with both pace and quality of execution.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a boom for digital health tech. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a positive impact on the implementation of digital healthcare technologies. These crises led healthcare providers and institutions to quickly get familiar with these technological advancements.
In 2020, most of the world entered into lockdowns in an effort to stop the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The stay-at-home orders had an effect on public health, with some people saying these had an effect on their mental health, while others took time to improve their fitness.