Columbus startup UnifiHealth has raised $5.4 million in seed funding to provide digital-first health benefits to small businesses.
Noting the complexities and cost of health insurance have become prohibitive for many small businesses, UnifiHealth says it can lower company healthcare costs by 20 percent while allowing employees to choose the highest quality providers.
“With this funding, we’re making good on our promise of bridging the gap between coverage that businesses can actually afford with coverage that people actually need,” Co-founder and CEO Ross Klosterman said in a statement.
UnifiHealth’s seed round was led by Anthemis with participation from Echelon Capital, Flare Capital, Digitalis Ventures, and Great Oaks VC.
“The UnifiHealth team is founded by visionaries who share our focus of developing emerging technologies that will truly change the market and improve people’s lives,” said Ruth Foxe Blader, Partner at Anthemis. “We are thrilled to support the company as it scales to meet a proven demand for a more seamless health plan that improves coverage and costs for small businesses.”
UnifiHealth was founded in 2019 and entered Rev1’s startup studio last fall. The company then raised a small pre-seed round, Klosterman said in a podcast interview.
The UnifiHealth team is leaning on personal experience in healthcare (Klosterman worked for AthenaHealth) and, of course, the company’s own status as a small business.
“We didn’t land in the small business market entirely by chance,” Klosterman wrote in a blog post. “My co-founders, Olivia and Brodie, have family members who own and operate small companies. I did the books for my mom’s 5 employee hair salon in high school. We’ve seen firsthand the acute pain of finding a high quality health plan that doesn’t break the bank. Heck, we’re a small business and we feel the pain ourselves! Today, Unifi is building a health plan that is both scalable and affordable for companies with less than 200 employees.”
UnifiHealth says it will build out its team with the funding. For information about open positions, visit UnifiHealth’s career page or the Purpose Jobs bulletin.
The company is working remotely but plans to grow from the insuretech hub of Columbus, reports Columbus Business First.
“America was—and continues to be—built on the shoulders of small businesses. Nearly 50 million people access health benefits through their small business employer (<100 employees) or by being self-employed. These Americans deserve a great health benefits experience at an affordable price,” the company says of its purpose. “Unfortunately, while innovation is successfully lowering cost for the largest employers (Amazon, Walmart, etc.), little to none of these innovations are filtering down to small companies.”
