Zesty, a London-based service for booking medical appointments online, announced today that it has obtained $2 million in funding at an undisclosed valuation from Ukrainian VC TA Venture and Russian VC ABRT Fund.
The company – which was backed at the seed stage by Luxembourg-based VC Mangrove Capital Partners, – says that it will use the new funding to expand its appointment service to additional health-care markets.
Zesty initially launched in beta in May 2013 as a booking service for dentists, but has since added access to private GPs, physiotherapists, chiropractors, and podiatrists. Although currently focused on London, they have announced plans to rollout across the UK and include 25 specialities by the end of this year. Zesty does not announce figures regarding customers, but does say that they currently provide access to 5,000 appointments per day.
Igor Semenov, partner at TA Venture, told East-West Digital News that, “as a rule, we co-invest with partners whom we trust and with whom we have worked a long time. In this case, the initial investment by Mangrove Capital served as a good recommendation.”
Regarding Zesty, Semenov says that “we consider Zesty a very promising project with a tested and successful business model…[it] has good traction and potential for future growth, good margins, and very high growth-rates (up to 40% monthly) “
Similar services include New York-based ZocDoc, French KelDoc, and Polish DocPlanner. ZocDoc, which was founded in 2007 and is backed by $97 million, has posted a job opening for a UK general manager, but has not yet announced formal plans to move into the market.
ABRT was founded by Andrei Baronov and Ratmir Timashev. They have a significant co-investment history in Russia with the Luxembourg-based fund Mangove Capital Partners.
Led by Viktoriya Tigipko, a prominent figure on the Ukrainian IT and VC scene, TA Venture has $50 million in committed capital. The fund has made 3 exits to date, including deals to leave companies such as New York City-based budget mobile-booking service WeHostels (acquired in November 2013 by leading student-focused travel agency StudentUniverse), Indian mobile-billing aggregator Qubecell (acquired in November 2013 by online-payment service Boku), and Indian Little Eye Labs, which develops a performance-analysis and monitoring tool (acquired in January 2014 by Facebook).
