Barkibuthe pet health startup has announced the closure of a new financing round for 5 million dollars (just over 4.5 million euros) led by the venture capital fund KFund. The news was announced by Pablo Pazos, co-founder of the startup, through his Twitter account.
Today at @Barkibu we announce a $5m round led by @Kfundvc . In addition, for the first time we counted that we have been growing sales by 20% each month for months.
We are a team of 55 people fighting to improve the health of our dogs and cats. pic.twitter.com/M8dl2DdUr0
– Pablo Pazos (@pablopr) May 4, 2023
They will continue to work on creating and expanding the best possible animal health insurance
The capital injection will help the company to continue climbing in the pet health market, of which they affirm that currently, only 3% of pets have health insurance, so they won’t stop until the percentage reaches 100%.
Its last funding round was in March 2021for a total of $5.6 million (about 4.7 million euros), led by TheVentureCity, MundiVentures, CDTI Innvierte and the co-founders of Barkibu. In addition, they included the participation of Leap Venture Studio, which is made up of Kinship and the Michelson Found Animals Foundation, with the support of R/GA Ventures.
Currently, Barkibu has a 20% monthly sales growth level and has a team of 55 people on its staff and 20,000 pet parents who fight every day so that more and more dogs and cats can have comprehensive health coverage, guaranteeing the tranquility of their owners and the well-being of the animals.
Barkibu, a pet tech based on artificial intelligence
Barkibu, based in A Coruña and founded by Pablo Pazos, Patricia Seoane, Enrique Torres, Álvaro Gutiérrez (co-founder and former CEO of Kiwoko) and María González, has a veterinary assistant that works with artificial intelligence 24 hours a day, the 7 days a week. It asks users simple questions about their pet’s health and symptoms, analyzes responses against thousands of similar cases, and provides advice on treatment and care, remote access to licensed veterinarians.
In addition, they offer customers a insurance that covers up to 80% of clinical expenses in case of illness or accident and the 100% of the expenses for vaccination and annual review within 10 to 15 business days. Likewise, it has an unlimited telehealth service with veterinarians, which includes different communication channels with professionals, such as chat, email, calls and even AI bot.
As they explain on their website, the founders of Barkibu were looking for something in which to invest all their passion and potential: an idea to which they dedicate most of their time, in which they believe and which will make them fall in love. And there was only one idea that met all these requirements: to collaborate in improving the quality of life of animals and provide first-hand and easily accessible professional veterinary information.
Barkibu thus competes in the pet health market, valued at around 100 billion dollars, through its holistic health platform. To do this, the startup uses machine learning on a library of more than 800,000 answered queries, to offer personalized care on the health of pets. It does so by adding data on the health of pets based on queries made by pet owners on its mobile app, as well as on insurance reports from veterinary clinics.
Barkibu co-founder, Pablo Pazossummarizes the value of this approach, saying that «our AI-powered telehealth lowers insurance operating costs and provides proprietary data to optimize insurance pricing and marketing. At the same time, we use insurance claims data to validate and train our AI.”
Image: Barkibu
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