Ro (Roman), an online health startup that sells hair loss supplements and erectile dysfunction medication to men, announced the acquisition of Modern Fertility, a reproductive health platform that allows users to order customized fertility hormone tests online.
Ro competes against startups like Hims, which is planning to go public at around $1 billion valuation. In July 2020, Ro raised $200 million in a funding round at a valuation of $1.5 billion.
Founded in 2017, Ro has raised $376 million in funding, generates $250 million in revenue every year, and has served five million doctor-patient interactions. The company’s backers include General Catalyst, with participation from existing investors FirstMark Capital, Torch, SignalFire, TQ Ventures, Initialized Capital, 3L, BoxGroup, and others.
In December 2020, Ro announced the acquisition of the digital platform, Workpath. The Workpath software platform enables healthcare companies to offer on-demand, in-home care and diagnostic services with an API system.
Like Ro, Modern Fertility takes a patient-centric approach and offers personalized fertility information and support for ovarian reserve, egg freezing and IVF, menopause, and more. Modern Fertility’s expanded offering includes its Prenatal Multivitamin, developed with OBGYNs, its quantitative Ovulation Test, early detection Pregnancy Test, cycle tracking app, and digital fertility tracking tools.
According to a press statement, Modern Fertility will integrate with Ro’s platform and infrastructure to scale its operations and existing offerings and build new personalized healthcare experiences.
The acquisition will also deepen Ro’s existing women’s healthcare vertical, leveraging Modern Fertility’s research capabilities, deep community, and the team of reproductive health experts to address more women’s healthcare demands throughout its platform.
Afton Vechery, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Modern Fertility, said, “We started Modern Fertility to transform women’s health from reactive to proactive. About 1 in 6 couples struggle to conceive, and yet there are only about 500 infertility clinics nationwide. We now have the opportunity to dramatically accelerate our vision of supporting women in every single step of the journey in reproductive care and beyond.”
“With Ro, we will be able to drive better outcomes and lower costs for millions of women and redefine women’s health as we know it. I could not be more energized about the future of Modern Fertility,” added Afton Vechery.
A total of 63 digital health companies were acquired in Q1 2021, compared to 52 in Q4 2020, according to Mercom’s Q1 2021 Digital Health Funding and M&A Report.
