A Columbus startup that enables in-office surgical procedures has raised $9 million toward expanding to more states and new service lines beyond its core in dental procedures – such as women's health in rural Minnesota.
Offor Health Inc., which started out with its SmileMD brand in 2014, is adding its tech-enabled services to community health services and medical specialists treating sleep disorders, chronic disease and other conditions. The business also expanded to Tennessee this year from Ohio, Illinois and Kentucky, and aims to keep adding territory.
"SmileMD has always been about reducing travel times and reducing wait times," CEO Saket Agrawal said.
"We're going to do a lot of pilots and trying and learning," he said. "We have really aggressive goals to get SmileMD across multiple states, and get some of these pilots off the ground to really understand where care delivery can go."
Offor Health brings mobile anesthesiologists, support staff and equipment to practices so they can perform outpatient surgery without waiting weeks or months for an opening in a hospital or surgery center. Its logistics software schedules rotations efficiently so the business can rapidly grow to larger scale.
"Telehealth can only do so much," Agrawal said. "We're looking to bring clinicians closer to the patient. ... If we can meet them in their home, in their community, you're going to drive down costs by not over-utilizing that emergency room.
"People are not always willing to drive an hour or two hours away to meet a specialist. "
The number of patients served last year, along with revenue, grew by 1.5 times over 2020. Now with more than 100 employees, Offor expects its staff to double this year.
Axa Venture Partners, the investing arm of Parisian insurer Axa, led the round. It also had joined a $6 million round that closed one year ago. The new Series 1A includes other returning investors, Seattle-based SpringRock Ventures and Columbus-based LOUD Capital, and newcomers including New York-based MBX Capital.
"The problem that Offor Health is immediately solving is one that is high-cost and high-impact," Manish Agarwal, New York-based general partner at Axa Venture Partners, said in a release. "This vision, combined with the clinical knowledge of the founding team, tells us that they are on track to not just make a splash in the changing healthcare landscape, but truly make a difference in patients' lives."
