Austin-based insurtech startup The Helper Bees has raised $6 million in its Series A round of funding.
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The Helper Bees wants to own the area of home care, CEO Char Hu told Crunchbase News in an interview. When a parent or a grandparent gets older and requires help with errands or other needs around the house, the process of securing assistance is often complicated and expensive.
The Helper Bees offers services like caregiver matching and telenursing, but also has a data analytics component and works with insurance carriers to reduce operating costs and improve experiences for care recipients.
The ‘caregiver journey’
Between features like The Helper Bees’ digital claims tool, and caregiver match and telenursing, the company was able to gather data and develop models to show how users interact with what Hu calls the “caregiver journey.”
The company licenses its mobile app to insurance carriers, which are then able to know, for example, when interventions are needed. So far, The Helper Bees counts 12 insurance carriers as partners, and the company’s revenue has grown eight times over the last year.
The Helper Bees basically works exclusively on behalf of the large insurance carriers, Hu said, and carriers are looking for ways to improve the experience of customers.
“You’re dealing with claimants’ lives when they’re by definition in flux … that caregiver journey I mentioned on the onset is complicated so that makes it a complicated problem for the payer,” Hu said. The Helper Bees’ services are meant to make the entire process smoother.
The Helper Bees, which has about $7.8 million in total funding, is different from what one might expect from a startup that just raised its Series A round. The startup recently acquired nurse care management company Dimensions and is planning on expanding into other verticals, including worker’s compensation and disability insurance.
The company grew from 23 employees at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to around 140 just five weeks later, Hu said. Between 40 and 50 of those employees are full time, and the rest are part time, doing nursing assessments.
The Series A round was led by Silverton Partners, which was also an investor in insurtech companies like The Zebra and Spot. Austin Impact Capital, Techstars, and angel investors also participated in the round.
Illustration: Li-Anne Dias
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