Existing backers HSBC and Humanica inject fresh capital into CXA
Singapore-based employee health ecosystem platform CXA Group has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Thailand-based human resources (HR) solutions provider and existing backer Humanica, and HSBC Life (International) Limited, a subsidiary of global banking and financial services provider HSBC Holdings, CXA announced in a statement today.
Founder and CEO of CXA Group Rosaline Chow Koo said in the statement, “The follow-on investment reflects Humanica and HSBC Life’s confidence in CXA’s long-term growth opportunity. It also further backs our unique ability to shift healthcare spend from treatment to prevention, while keeping costs under control.”
Koo added that the startup is seeing ‘overwhelming interest’ from investors, and that further developments are slated to take place in the coming months.
According to the statement, the company will funnel the money toward enabling customization of its platform. This will allow it to be ‘white-labelled’ by Asia-based banks, as it will enable the company to offer a tailored solution to its commercial clients.
Employees of such companies will be able to purchase personalized app-based health, wealth, and wellness options, through funds from insurance policies provided by their employers that will be released into the platform’s eWallet.
“By adapting this platform – one that people could use every single day – and making it available through banks to SME employers and employees, our ambition is also to help the banks serve more personalized bancassurance offerings that individuals need and want in their personal lives, at precisely the right moment,” Koo said in the statement.
Koo also noted that the CXA platform brings together offerings such as insurance, epharmacy, health screenings, and physical and mental health services, to integrate healthcare for employees and shave off intermediary costs for employers.
“Building an enterprise-grade white-label software that can be integrated with the complex systems of banks, insurers and payroll firms is no trivial task and it has involved us having to build a reference microservices architecture that is scalable, API-led and open source, from scratch,” she added.
With this round, Humanica has doubled its investment in CXA, the statement said. Humanica and CXA have also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), through which CXA will integrate its services with Humanica’s Human Capital Management platform in Thailand.
The collaboration will cater to Humanica’s 3,000 local enterprise customers and their 700,000 employees.
“CXA’s innovative use of analytics helps our enterprise clients effectively manage their healthcare costs and promote their employees’ well-being,” Humanica CEO Soontorn Dentham said in the statement.
“This combined payroll, employee benefits and health ecosystem platform offering will be an essential part of HR and employee experience transformation for our corporate and SME customers in Thailand, and we believe it will be the first of more value-adding integrations involving CXA,” he continued.
The funding from Humanica and HSBC Life comes in just a few months after CXA laid off a dozen employees due to the automation of certain roles within the company. The startup’s investors also highlighted the need for a “clear path to profitability” in March this year.
In 2019, CXA raised $25 million in a convertible note bridge financing round from a slew of investors including HSBC, Singtel Innov8, Telkom Indonesia MDI Ventures, Humanica, and Heritas Venture Fund. Its total funding haul prior to this round stood at $58 million, including funding from a Series A in 2015 and a Series B round in 2017.
Founded in 2013, the company currently serves 600 enterprise clients and has spent the previous year developing an enterprise-grade software solution and fortifying its technical capacity.
To this end, the startup established a partnership with global software company ThoughtWorks in January 2019. It also set up a Tech Hub in Vietnam in the same year to focus on product development, artificial intelligence and machine learning, among others.
Header image courtesy of CXA Group
