Startup aiming to disrupt dental insurance gets seed funding from local VC firm
Boston Business Journal
Author – Sam Mintz
Oct 11, 2021 – A Boston startup trying to remove the dental insurance middleman has raised $2.8 million in seed funding from a local VC firm that focuses on early stage B2B software companies.
Bento, founded in 2017, is building a platform that connects people needing dental care directly with providers. It lets users to enroll, unenroll, select services, sell plans and process financials all in one app.
Its founder, Ram Sudireddy, is a serial entrepreneur who has has senior roles at three companies which were acquired, founding two of them.
“I didn’t understand when I was running my companies, my employees, every year, their insurance premiums were going up and the care was going down — the deductible is going up, the copay is going up. I didn’t understand what the problem is. And then I figured that there is so much bureaucracy and inefficiencies in the system. So I said, ‘Okay, I need to do some technology innovation here,’” Sudireddy told BostInno earlier this year.
The funding round is coming from Companyon Ventures, which recently closed a $27.5 million fund.
“It’s not every day that we run into a founder and a company that is aiming to disrupt a massive and highly antiquated market,” said Firas Raouf, general partner at Companyon, in a statement. “We as individuals considered ourselves lucky that we have access to dental insurance, only to be educated by Ram and team that the market only offers the illusion of insurance. It is time to make cost-effective dentistry available to everyone.”
Bento is going to use the funding to keep growing by investing in its “broker network partnerships” and sales and marketing outreach, the company said.