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Kindbody, a start-up that attracts millennials in its ephemeral fertility clinics with a feminist message and an attractive brand image, has raised $ 15 million from Series A as part of a round-robin led by RRE Ventures and Perceptive Advisors.
The New York-based company was created last year by Gina Bartasi, a fertility sector veterinarian who had previously launched Progyny, a fertility protection solution for employers, and FertilityAuthority.com, a flat information platform and a social network for people plagued by fertility.
"We want to increase accessibility," Bartasi told TechCrunch. "For too long, IVF and fertility treatments were at 1%. We want to make fertility treatments affordable, accessible and accessible to all, regardless of ethnic origin and social economic status. "
Gentleman operates a fleet of vans – mobile clinics rather – where women receive a free blood test for the control of anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH), which helps them to badess their ovarian egg supply but does not allow for to determine with certainty the fertility of a woman. Based on the test results, Kindbody advises women to visit her brick and mortar clinic in Manhattan, where they can receive a complete badessment of their fertility at a cost of $ 250. In the end, mobile clinics serve as a marketing strategy for Kindbody's main service: freezing eggs.
Kindbody charges patients $ 6,000 per egg freezing cycle, a price that does not include the cost of necessary medications, but remains well below the market average.
Bartasi said mobile clinics have been "extremely popular", attracting a supply of women to his brick and mortar clinic. As a result, Kindbody plans to launch a "fertility bus" this spring, where the company will conduct comprehensive fertility badessments, including the AMH test, a pelvic ultrasound and a full consultation with a fertility specialist.
In other words, Kindbody will propose all the components of the egg freezing process. in a bus outside of the actual recovery, which occurs in Kindbody's lab. The bus will travel to New York City before heading west to San Francisco, where it plans to park on large employers' campuses, supplying employees with technologies interested in their fertility. .
"Our mission at Kindbody is to provide care directly to the patient instead of asking him to come and visit us and disturb them," Bartasi said.
An overview of Kindbody's "Fertility Bus", which is still in preparation
Kindbody, who has raised $ 22 million so far from Green D Ventures, Trailmix Ventures, Winklevoss Capital, Chelsea Clinton, Vivek Garipalli, co-founder of Clover Health, and others also provides women with pregnancy with in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intrauterine insemination (IUI).
With the latest investment, Kindbody will open a second brick-and-mortar clinic in Manhattan and its first permanent clinic in San Francisco. In addition, Bartasi announced the closing of an acquisition in Los Angeles that will lead to the first permanent Kindbody clinic in the city. Soon, the company will expand to include mental health, nutrition and gynecology services.
In an interview with The Verge last year, Bartasi said he was inspired by SoulCycle and DryBar, companies whose century-old branding strategies and prolific presence of social media had helped them build up customers. With this in mind, Kindbody informs its followers of the new pop-up clinics via its Instagram page.
In this article, The Verge called Kindbody "the fertility cycle" and questioned its branding strategy and its claim that freezing eggs "freezes time". After all, little research confirms the effectiveness of egg freezing.
"The technology to freeze eggs has only been used extensively in the last five or six years," Bartasi explained. "The majority of women who have frozen their eggs have not used them yet. It's not like you freeze your eggs in February and meet Mr. Right in June. "
Although Kindbody wants to promote 99% fertility treatments, there is no doubt about the exorbitant cost of these services, and some might think that companies like Kindbody are exploiting women's fear of infertility. Providing free AMH tests, which often falsely lead women to believe that they are not as fertile as they would have hoped, could encourage more women to seek a full badessment of fertility and to pay $ 6,000 to freeze their eggs, while in reality are just as fertile as the average woman and are not the ideal candidate for the difficult and uncomfortable process.
Bartasi said that Kindbody clearly explained all options to his patients. She added that when she hears accusations that services like Kindbody are taking advantage of the fear of infertility, they tend to come from inherited programs and doctors specializing in male fertility: "They are a little shaken by some of the new entrants who look like patients "he said. "We are women designing for women. For too long, women's health has been solved for men. "
Kindbody's pricing system can itself create fear in the fertility clinics in place. Startup egg freezing services are much cheaper than market averages; his IVF services, however, are not. Not to mention the cost of drugs needed to successfully harvest eggs in the ovaries, the average cost of an egg freezing procedure costs about $ 10,000, compared to $ 6,000 at Kindbody. Its IVF services are on par with other market options, costing between $ 10,000 and $ 12,000 – excluding drugs – for an IVF cycle.
Kindbody is able to charge less for freezing eggs because they have eliminated operational inefficiencies, that is, they are a technological platform while many fertility clinics in the United States are still distributing tons of paperwork and use fax machines. Bartasi admits, however, that this means that Kindbody earns less money per patient than some of these traditional clinics.
"What's a reasonable profit margin for fertility doctors today?" Bartasi said. "Historically, margins were very, very high, driven by a high retail price. But are these really high sales prices sustainable in the long run? If you charge $ 22,000 for IVF, how long is it? Our profit margins are healthy. "
Bartasi is not the only entrepreneur to seize the opportunity here, as I said. A large number of healthy start-ups have recently launched and secured funding.
Tia, for example, opened a clinic and launched an app that provides health tips and rules for women. Extend Fertility, which, like Kindbody, helps women preserve their fertility through egg freezing, raised $ 15 million. And a startup called Jane NextGen, which is trying to detect endometriosis with "smart buffers," announced a $ 9 million Series A a few weeks ago.
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