SAN FRANCISCO — While many start-ups have sought to make their name in the health care industry, fewer are taking on the knotty health insurance information services sector. Collective Health, which provides tools to help companies with their employer-provided insurance, said on Tuesday that it had raised $81 million in a new round of financing. The round was led by Google Ventures, a new investor, and existing backers New Enterprise Associates, Founders Fund, Maverick Capital, Redpoint Ventures and RRE Ventures. Collective Health raised $32 million seven months ago, and the new round increases the company’s total fund-raising to $119 million. Health insurance is a notoriously difficult business for start-ups to grapple with, given the reams of regulations that must be followed. Another health insurance start-up, Oscar, which is valued at $1.5 billion, is focused on trying to make buying health insurance easier for consumers. Collective Health is also trying to make health insurance easier to use. But the two-year-old company is taking a different tack by focusing on employers, letting customers tailor which insurance options they want to offer their workers. Its offerings include ways to eliminate paper-based systems for the management and administration of such insurance plans. The start-up said that it was working with insurers like Anthem and Blue Shield of California as partners. In connection with the fund-raising, Collective Health said that it planned to expand to companies outside of California next year. “We’re working to shift the focus of health insurance from profits to people,” Ali Diab, the chief executive and co-founder of Collective Health, said in a statement. “This significant infusion of capital comes at the perfect moment, enabling us to make our solution available to companies across the U.S.”
Collective Health has raised $81m from Google Ventures in a bid to expand outside its California base, throughtout the US. The company offers a helpiing hand to small businesses to ﻿migrate their insurance schemes to self-funded plans, and will work with major insurers such as Anthem and Blue Shield of California to help deliver its offering. In an interview with TechCrunch, co-founder and CEO David Schwartz said that his startup was looking for ways to “disrupt” healthcare by offering consumers more choice than they currently have.