The company closed a Series D Round in its largest funding to date.

Color, a startup that works on a population scale in distributed healthcare and clinical testing, announced Monday its raise of $167 million in a Series D round. Led by General Catalyst and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., with participation from Viking Global Investors and others, the round tagged Color with a valuation of $1.5 billion. (Crunchbase)

The latest financing includes $ 75 million that Color raised in January 2020 and brings its cumulative funding to date to $ 278 million. It previously raised $ 80 million in a Series C in 2017.

Use of funds

Color said it intends to use the funding to further scale up its mission to develop public health technology and infrastructure for governments, corporates, and other such institutions that are responsible for large populations.

Color is working with public and private entities such as the City of San Francisco, the Teamsters Union, the National Institutes of Health, Salesforce, the State of California, and United Airlines.

It is conducting national Covid-19 testing programs and rolling out vaccine delivery systems to state and local governments, employers, and educational organizations.

“We are building the rails for a national technology-based public health infrastructure,” said Color CEO Othman Laraki in a statement. “The inability to deliver basic healthcare services during the biggest health crisis of our life is a direct consequence of the lack of a public health delivery model.”

“By investing in the technology that ensures easy and affordable access to healthcare, we’re creating the infrastructure that will serve us for decades to come,” Laraki added.

Color saw rapid growth in 2020

Laraki told TechCrunch that 2020 proved to be a record year for the company, clocking about five times the business recorded in the previous year.

It intends to use the latest funding to further boost its growth trajectory – particularly in healthcare services “that are not acute care where you don’t need to show up in a hospital.”

Laraki said a shift was taking place in healthcare that was similar to the move from physical outlets to online shopping. “At some point, you build Amazon  — a technology-first stack that’s optimized around access and scale.”

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