Mental health issues such as stress, depression and anxiety can lead to work-related illnesses, absenteeism and long-term sick leave. Yet many companies think that offering gym memberships is enough. Determined that mental health should be tackled differently, European startup Ifeel, which raised $6.6 million in 2021, has now raised $20 million in Series B investment co-led by FinTLV Ventures and Korelya Capital. In total, ifeel has raised $40 million since its founding.
ifeel was originally founded in 2017 as a consumer-centric therapy platform but has pivoted to help businesses provide staff support during the pandemic and as part of employers’ and insurers’ healthcare offerings. The company competes with companies like Modern Health.
“When you enter our platform, the first thing you do is a digital assessment, which is the co-pilot for the AI system that we’ve built,” CEO Amir Kaplan told me, “so we can actually assess the risk of the person entering the platform and predict the optimal level of care.”
“After this assessment, we recommend the best treatment for mild to high-risk cases. Our goal is to identify high-risk cases and prevent them from having a significant impact on individuals and businesses. But we also prevent cases that have already started, allowing businesses to support them in a scalable way.”
According to research by the UK-based think tank, the Mental Health Centre, poor mental health is a major problem for business and society, costing England £300 billion a year.
“This investment validates our thesis that the insurance industry must prioritize prevention and proactive solutions,” Gil Arraji, founder and managing partner at FinTLV Ventures, said in a statement.
