Hive Health raises $6.5 million to transform HMO access for more SMEs

Digital health insurance company Hive Health raised $6.5 million in Pre-Series A funding to transform healthcare access for more SMEs in the Philippines.

Key investors of the fund raise included Sy family-backed Gentree Fund and global VC firm BEENEXT. Other institutional investors include Y Combinator, The Graduate Syndicate, Amasia, and Oak Drive Ventures. Angel investors include David Wells, former CFO of Netflix and chairman of Wise; Lee Kheng Nam, former deputy chairman of Temasek subsidiary Vertex Holding; Natasha Reyes, former owner of HMO HPPI; and Dr. Edwin Mercado, founder of one of the largest healthcare systems in the Philippines that is now part of the Healthway Qualimed network.

“We see immense potential in Hive Health’s innovative approach to transforming healthcare for SMEs. Leveraging our extensive local consumer knowledge and operational expertise, we are confident in Hive Health’s ability to cement its market leadership in the SME space and drive significant positive change in the Philippine market. We are excited to support their journey,” said Mark Sng, representing the Gentree Fund.

“We’ve validated that SMEs love what we’ve built and now we want to reach more lives by accelerating our penetration of the underserved SME market in the Philippines,” Hive Health’s CEO and Co-Founder Camille Ang noted. “The fresh funds will help us grow our superstar mission-driven team, and invest in our technology platform and operations to further elevate the patient and employer experience.”

In addition, Hive Health will be expanding its already extensive nationwide network to more healthcare providers, including those in more remote areas of the country.

Founded at Harvard and Stanford Universities in 2021, Hive Health is a full-stack digital health insurer, offering hassle-free, comprehensive HMO health plans for SMEs and startups, encompassing outpatient, inpatient, emergency, and dental care through an extensive nationwide network of 1,700 hospitals and clinics, and over 60,000 doctors across locations.

Prior to this raise, Hive Health made history by being the first startup to acquire one of the pioneering health maintenance organization (HMO) insurance companies in the Philippines, Health Plan Philippines, Inc. (HPPI), securing a full insurance license and 37-year nationwide provider network.

Co-Founders Ms. Ang and Jiawen Tang started Hive Health from a shared discovery that while health insurance is extremely inaccessible in developing countries like the Philippines, there is an opportunity to leverage their unique backgrounds in fintech, data, and public-private partnership to solve this problem.

From their Harvard masters thesis, they learned that out of the 110 million population, less than 10% had access to comprehensive health coverage beyond PhilHealth and over 50% of healthcare costs are still paid out of pocket, resulting in more than 1.5 million Filipinos falling into poverty each year due to health shocks.

Camille and Jiawen set out to change the status quo by questioning: “Why do health plans in the Philippines barely cover critical illnesses or services like mental health and medicine? Why do we need to wait for hours just to get a Letter of Authorization (LOA) to see a doctor? Why is customer service often out of reach?”

Beyond offering innovative, inclusive benefits such as mental health, medicine, and LGBTQIA+ partner coverage, Hive Health has built a digital platform that empowers patients to manage their care easily through its one-of-a-kind vertically integrated telehealth and care coordination model that bridges virtual and in-person care.

Additionally, companies can use Hive Health’s HR dashboard to centrally manage plan enrollments, invoices, and understand employee wellness.

Furthermore, Hive Health has developed its own Electronic Medical Records system and integrated provider portal that facilitates transparent claims management and faster payouts for its partner doctors and clinics.

“Change in healthcare is notoriously slow, but we’ve seen promising results from our ‘test fast and fix things’ approach, and the new round of funding will help us accelerate this further,” noted Ms. Tang, also the president of Hive Health. “We have not only iteratively innovated on the traditional aspects of health insurance administration but now are increasingly working towards our ultimate goal of transforming the total patient experience through changing care delivery models.”

Hive Health has built robust foundations from the ground up over the past three years, and it plans to lead the industry in adoption of new technologies such as generative AI and machine learning predictive analytics.

With the growing competition for talent, SMEs have been flocking to this startup to serve their employees, largely from word-of-mouth. From its launch in 2021, Hive Health is now serving hundreds of small and medium businesses and has grown eight times in the past year alone.

Beyond providing more holistic healthcare for employees, one employer shares how critical one’s HMO is for talent acquisition and retention.

“We’re seeing the trend now when people apply for companies. They don’t only look at how much money they’re getting, how big their salary is, but how holistic the package being offered to them is. We make sure that we partner with the right people, with the right benefit partners, and that’s why we chose to partner with Hive Health,” said Sam Tangco, COO of Five Story Group of Companies, who recently renewed their contract with Hive Health.