🌱Knok healthcare closes a €1.7m investment to accelerate the democratisation of access to health, through video consultations
We are proud to lead this round for the Porto-based startup that improves access to essential healthcare services, along with Fundo de Inovação Social.
knok healthcare (knok), a Portuguese startup with a global footprint in the development of technology and the provision of clinical services through video consultation, announces its latest investment round of 1.7 million Euros, led by the social impact fund Mustard Seed MAZE e Fundo de Inovação Social, with the participation of FascinanteFólio from Porto and Ryse Asset Management from London. This investment will accelerate international expansion and the development of knok’s technology.
Knok’s mission is to contribute to universal access to healthcare, connecting doctors and patients through easy-to-use technology.
The global pandemic context has brought to the limelight the need to provide quality healthcare remotely, for example in the management of chronic, non-urgent patients, who are being particularly affected by the overload of health systems with COVID patients. This transition led hospital and insurance groups to look for alternative models of providing clinical care to their patients while maintaining operational clinical teams.
Serving a base of more than 1.2 million patients, knok is the Portuguese leader in video consultations, with prominent partners such as EuropAssistance, AdvanceCare and Medicare, Lusíadas Saúde from UnitedHealth Group, and NOS Telecom, among others. Knok is also present in Brazil, South Africa and Angola, among other geographies. Since the beginning of October, knok is an accredited service provider to the NHS in the UK, and it is now preparing the launch in India and Italy.
José Bastos, co-founder and CEO says: “We are very pleased for closing this round, which will allow us to strengthen the sales team and accelerate the entry into new markets with increasingly differentiating products and services. We believe that with the support of quality investors like ours, we will be able to generate even more social impact, bringing access to quality healthcare to many more millions of people”.
João Magalhães, co-founder and CTO says: “Knok is a solution built by doctors for doctors, designed with the best clinical practices in mind, with a focus on ease of use by those who are not tech specialists. I believe that our leadership position comes from the excellent product we offer. In our tech development roadmap, we have unique features such as multidisciplinary and group consultations, which will allow a practitioner, a patient and a family member or caregiver to participate in the same video consultation, sharing information in a secure and simple way while eliminating hurdles in the access to healthcare”.
“The urgency to deliver remote medical services has been accelerated by the recent pandemic and, in many cases, has become the only option for chronically ill or non-urgent patients,” says Henry Wigan, partner at Mustard Seed MAZE, an impact fund headquartered in Lisbon and with investments across Europe. “We believe that knok has the required attributes to win in this market, promoting a significant improvement in access to healthcare, especially to the most vulnerable segments of the population, such as children and the elderly, and to populations in less urban locations.”
Knok’s success has been determined by its commitment to two critical factors: information security during video consultations and readiness to integrate in any clinical management system, which has differentiated knok from other existing and “adapted” players, such as WhatsApp or Zoom.
Knok was founded by José Bastos and João Magalhães in December 2015. Since its foundation, the company has served over 100 000 video consultations to improve access to healthcare services to those that need it the most.
