Mental-health startup raises $36.6 million to scale up services

AbleTo, a Manhattan firm that screens people for behavioral-health conditions and offers technology-driven interventions, raised $36.6 million in a Series D funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures, the company announced Wednesday. The firm also received funding from Aetna, an insurer it has been working with since 2011.

Mental-health startups like AbleTo occupy a "small but growing space," said Nikhil Krishnan, a tech-industry analyst at CB Insights. Nationally the startups are on track to close a record number of venture-backed equity investments with funders this year after landing 25 deals last year, according to a report CB Insights released this month.

Aetna's president, Karen Lynch, has been a champion of AbleTo and the field of behavioral health in general, said Rob Rebak, AbleTo's president and chief executive. "I think, almost more so than any other executive we've worked with, she realizes how critical it is to treat mental health at the core of overall health and wellness," he said.

Currently AbleTo helps the insurers, employers and health systems it works with identify and screen hundreds of thousands of patients who may be suffering from an untreated behavioral-health condition each year. It offers tens of thousands of them telepsychiatry and other digital treatment tools.

With the funding raised in this round, AbleTo plans to scale up its provider network, with the ultimate goal of reaching millions of patients, said Rebak. He projects the company will double in size this year and triple in size next year.

"Mental-health startup raises $36.6 million to scale up services" originally appeared in Crain's New York Business.