Sy family’s Gentree invests in health insurance startup

Digital health insurance startup Hive Health has raised $6.5 million in a financing round led by Sy family-backed Gentree Fund, allowing it to expand its network of health-care providers and cover more small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

“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,” Hive Health’s chief executive and cofounder Camille Ang said in a statement.

Founded at the Harvard and Stanford universities in 2021, Hive Health is a full-stack digital health insurer offering comprehensive plans for SMEs and startups. The plans cover outpatient, inpatient, emergency and dental care services through an extensive nationwide network of 1,700 hospitals and clinics and over 60,000 doctors.

Aside from Gentree Fund, investors of the preseries A funding round are Singapore-headquartered global venture capital firm BEENEXT, US startup accelerator Y Combinator, The Graduate Syndicate, Amasia and Oak Drive Ventures. This financing process is when a startup seeks backers in order to develop its services and grow momentum in its chosen market.

Its angel investors during its seed round included former Netflix chief financial officer David Wells, former Vertex Holding deputy chair Lee Kheng Nam, former owner of Health Plan Philippines, Inc. Natasha Reyes and Healthway Qualimed Network founder Edwin Mercado.

“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,” Ang said.

Hive Health said it would be expanding its network of health-care providers, including those in more remote areas of the country.

Prior to this funding round, Hive Health acquired one of the pioneering health maintenance organizations in the Philippines, HPPI, securing a full insurance license and a 37-year-old nationwide provider network.

Ang and cofounder Jiawen Tang said they started Hive Health from a shared discovery that there was an opportunity to leverage their unique backgrounds in fintech, data, and public-private partnership to solve health insurance inaccessibility.

According to the startup, less than 10 percent of the population have access to comprehensive health coverage outside PhilHealth, while over 50 percent of healthcare costs are still paid out of pocket. INQ