Ilant Health, a leader in value-based obesity management and cardiometabolic health solutions, announced the extension of its seed round of fundraising from $3 million to $5.5 million. This women-led startup received additional funds from a combination of new health-oriented investors, including LifeX Ventures, Celtic House Asia Partners, Cornucopian Capital, and existing investors.
This decision to extend the seed round comes from Ilant’s accelerating traction due to a solid clinical model and proprietary analytics. Ilant Health gained significant recognition, winning all three World 50 Group Academies (EHIR, HPIR, and PHIR) and being selected for Highmark and Allegheny Health Network’s accelerator, AlphaLab Health. Ilant Health recently won the Employee Health Innovation Roundtable (EHIR) Traction Award, recognizing the company’s significant interest from EHIR employer members.
With Ilant Health continuing to gain widespread attention for its innovative value-based approach, it owes much of its success to the women who played pivotal roles in its success. And Elina Onitskanky, CEO of Ilant Health, launched the company knowing that the gender gap in VC funding meant only 2% of funding goes toward women founders. But Ilant benefited from the steadfast support of healthcare leaders and other women leaders and investors, who helped shape the company into where it is today.
Onitskanky, a Harvard Business School graduate, gained support from several alumnae during the company’s growth. For example, her colleague Jessica Muse – who saw the potential as an angel investor – joined as a co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Ilant Health in the early days of the company’s inception. And Rika Christanto, Partner of LifeX Ventures, saw the vision for Ilant Health as it continued to grow and invested $2 million in the company. Chrissie Francona, acting as a scout for Pillar Ventures, saw the startup’s potential and extended her support by investing in the company.
Ilant Health’s commercial traction is proven through the successful launch of clinical services to multiple employers and the use of its claims analytics for hundreds of thousands of lives on behalf of large health plans and employers. And Ilant’s claims analytics, driven by unstructured machine learning, have provided notable insights around the potential to drive reductions in total cost of care and return on investment from obesity treatment.
Ilant’s clinical care outcomes highlight its ability to engage individuals with the greatest need for care, including those with higher BMIs and medical comorbidities. Ilant supports its members in understanding and selecting optimal treatment options—many of which are not GLP-1s—and offers exceptional integrated care through obesity medicine physicians, dietitians, and mental health specialists.
In connection with this funding round, Ilant has also engaged prominent industry advisors, including Teri Wisness, former Director of U.S. Benefits at Google and Partner at Iron Street Advisors, and Meghan Fitzgerald, former executive at Cardinal Health and member of the Board of Directors at Tenet Healthcare.
With the extended seed funding round, Ilant Health is prepared to innovate further and disrupt the healthcare industry, leveraging its unique analytics and value-based approach to address the growing challenges of obesity and cardiometabolic health.
KEY QUOTES:
“AlphaLab Health looks for companies to solve problems facing healthcare today. Obesity is a major healthcare problem without an organized market approach to solving it. Ilant’s team incorporated behavioral modification, medical and surgical therapies into an organized approach utilizing their proprietary algorithm to tailor the best answer for each patient. We believe they will have a bright future helping provider and payor systems solve this critical healthcare need.”
– Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, Chief Physician Executive at Allegheny Health Network
“At LifeX, we deeply analyze tech breakthroughs and systemic shifts in healthcare. But it’s very hard to sift good founders from bad. So it was a serendipitous moment when I learned that Elina and Jess, classmates whom I have repeatedly seen manage difficult situations and reliably achieve the impossible, were building a company together. Their combined experience made them uniquely positioned to solve this health epidemic in a scalable way and gain commercial traction at a level we have rarely seen for a company at this stage. I am thrilled to back them, and have utter conviction in their ability to deliver both outsized returns and societal impact.”
– Rika Christanto, Partner of LifeX Ventures
“When I met the Ilant team, I was impressed by how they are bringing something new to the obesity treatment market – truly solving employer needs by addressing both utilization management and care provision, recognizing the need to provide a range of solution options, and focusing on accountability for outcomes.”
– Teri Wisness, former Director of U.S. Benefits at Google and Partner at Iron Street Advisors
