This morning Palta, a London-based startup that helps cofound and build digital health companies, landed $100 million in Series B funding. Per Brilioth at VNV Global led the round with participation from Target Global and other existing and new investors.

WHAT IT DOES 

Palta’s portfolio companies include Flo, maker of a women’s health app, Simple, a digital behavioral health and nutrition tool, and Zing Coach, an artificial intelligence-backed fitness coach. 

According to the company’s webpage, Palta isn’t a VC or an accelerator. Instead, it works as a cofounder for health and wellness startups. Its services include providing financing for its portfolio companies up to Series B, marketing guidance, access to professionals in tech and life science, in-house recruiting and legal support. Palta in turn gets a 51% stake in the company. 

The company has also created the “Palta Brain,” which is a data platform that can be used by the company’s startups. 

The company boasts 2.4 million active paid subscribers to its apps and over 600 employees. 

WHAT IT’S FOR 

The new infusion of cash is intended to help Palta grow its product line. Specifically, the company said that it wants to create more products like Flo. 

"Almost every tech company in the top-50 globally has more than one product, so do we,” Yuri Gurski, CEO and founder of Palta, said in a statement. “We believe that it helps to address the pain points of more customers, as well as creating opportunities for learning and cross-pollination. We are interested in adding more products to our offering by providing strategic investment into the new generation of health-and-fitness-focused mobile apps."

MARKET SNAPSHOT 

One of Palta’s main portfolio companies has quite a bit of its own funding behind it. Founded in 2015, Flo was designed to help users track their period and ovulation, gain insights into health and mood, and get birth control reminders. The company currently has more than $25.5 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. 

However, it hasn’t been all smooth sailing for Flo. In early 2021, the company settled a Federal Trade Commission complaint regarding improper disclosure of sensitive user data to third-party marketing and analytics services from Facebook, Google and others. 

Flo released a statement after the FTC's announcement that said it "cooperated fully throughout the FTC's review of our privacy policy and procedures."

However, it did go on to say that the settlement “is not an admission of any wrongdoing. Rather, it is a settlement to avoid the time and expense of litigation and enables us to decisively put this matter behind us.”

Cyprus-based Simple has also been in the news for its $5 million Series A funding round that it closed in 2020, which Palta participated in.