Urban Health, a digital wellness company based in San Francisco, announced Thursday its $3.4 million seed funding round led by 3one4 Capital. Other participants in the round include angel investor and Disney SVP of product Ajay Arora, Venture Highway and Founder Bank Capital.
The Urban Health app is a smart wellness assistant that helps users manage stress levels and get better sleep. By tracking sleep habits, steps and mindfulness minutes, the app is able to create a personalized wellness plan with text-based health coaching and recorded audio meditations and sleep sessions.
The company currently partners with large organizations and hopes to work with more in the future, including schools. When it comes to helping businesses tackle employee burnout, Urban Health says it’s focussing on preventative care.
“When working with companies, chiefly enterprises and educational institutes, what we’re seeing is [the] priority of administration is to invest in preventive wellness measures, rather than waiting for worst case to happen with their people and bear healthcare costs,” Urban Health co-founder Kshitij Jaggi told Built In in an email. “They’re looking to invest in solutions to let the steam off on [a] frequent basis, rather than wait for a pressure cooker situation or a burnout.”
So far Urban Health’s approach to mental wellness seems to be working. The company analyzed users over a four-week period and found that 85 percent of people reported an improvement in their overall wellness, including better sleep, lower stress levels and generally feeling more relaxed.
“We made a deep dive into this space and realized every customer’s journey is different and everyone needs different kinds of assistance,” Jaggi said in a statement. “This is at the heart of what we’ve built until now and where we will continue to innovate. Addressing different customer wellness needs and assisting members based on goals is key to what we do. We assist with deep insights, nudging our members to take the right actions at the right time.”
Urban Health plans to use its new funding to scale its member case and add one-on-one coaching through audio and video calls.
