Vitable, an enhanced Direct Primary Care company working with SMB employers to deliver affordable and high-quality healthcare to hourly workers, announced it has raised a $16 million Series A funding round led by Cherryrock Capital with participation from Citi Impact Fund, First Round Capital, newark venture partners (nvp), Commerce Ventures, and Y Combinator.
Since being founded in 2020, Vitable has raised over $25 million in venture capital. And Vitable plans to use the new funding round to rapidly expand into new states beyond the nine markets they already operate in while also further strengthening the coverage of their enhanced Direct Primary Care plan and ACA compliance solutions.
The company also hopes to be available in over 40 states shortly and has already leveraged the new funding to launch Vitable in 3 additional markets, including Florida, Texas, and Ohio. And Vitable will also continue investing in growing its primary care and care navigation capabilities to support self-insured employers.
Launched by Joseph Kitonga, Vitable was developed to fill the healthcare gap for working families who make too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to afford comprehensive health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
Kitonga is a former Thiel Fellow, Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, and Y Combinator alum. And he grew up helping his parents bootstrap a home healthcare agency after immigrating from Kenya. One of the biggest challenges the business faced was finding an affordable healthcare plan for hourly employees, where many workers lived without any coverage. Often, he noticed employees forced to depend on the ER and urgent care for basic care, continuing the cycle of debt and making upward mobility very difficult.
After coming across a study highlighting how access to high-quality primary care can impact a 20-year difference in the average life expectancy within two neighborhoods less than 5 miles apart, Kitonga decided to do something about it. And at the age of 21, he turned down a full-time offer at Microsoft as a software engineer and left school to build Vitable full-time to increase access to high-quality care for hourly employees.
Vitable’s subscription-based primary care model costs employers just $1 a day. Employees and their dependents get free access to in-home and virtual primary care visits from a dedicated team of providers without copays or deductibles. And Vitable membership also includes over 1,000 free prescriptions, common lab tests, mental health programs, and care navigation services. All these services are easily accessible through Vitable’s mobile app.
Vitable covers over 50,000 lives across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois, Delaware, Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Florida. And their customers consist largely of small and medium businesses with a large mix of hourly workers as well as self-insured employers looking to contain rising healthcare costs.
KEY QUOTES:
“31.9% of the American workforce, or 51.9 million workers, makes less than $15 per hour. Many are stuck making too much to qualify for Medicaid and too little to afford traditional health insurance, leaving them under or uninsured. And unfortunately most innovative healthcare companies today fail to address these underserved communities. That’s why Vitable started with a focus on small business and hourly employees and our solutions remain tailored to their unique needs. Delivering truly affordable preventive and primary care along with free prescriptions and mental health coverage to expand access to care for the American workforce.”
– Joseph Kitonga
“Vitable has a big opportunity to positively impact individuals and families in the U.S. by providing new, more affordable healthcare options for shift workers and those working in small businesses. At the Citi Impact Fund, we are excited to invest in the Vitable team and look forward to seeing them continue to develop innovative solutions to address health access for low-income households.”
– Ryan Alam, SVP, Principal, Citi Impact Fund
