Accelerate Fund III backs Care Group as it looks to expand mental healthcare platform into new markets

The Edmonton-based Care Group of Companies, which offers various healthtech solutions, has closed a $2-million CAD round with participation from Alberta’s Accelerate Fund III, which is funded by the province and managed by Yaletown Partners.

Care Group says its platform is being used by the Central Alberta Child Advocacy Center to provide mental health support to youth and their families.

Care Group said the all-equity round also saw participation from strategic angel investors and family offices, and that it will use the funding to expand into new markets across Canada and the United States later this year and into 2025. The startup will be hiring to support its partnerships, indigenous health, development, and marketing teams as it prepares to scale up. 

Care Group declined to disclose how much it has raised to date.

Co-founded in 2019 by CEO and director Ray Yue and COO Marline Aizouki, Care Group consists of three tech solutions focused on different parts of the healthcare system: EaseCare, InstaCare, and CorpCare. 

EaseCare provides virtual mental health assessments and doctor consultations—which are publicly funded health services—as well as private-pay counselling and therapy. The InstaCare platform provides clinics with a dashboard for staff to prescribe medications, integrate billing, and perform inter-team communication. Its CorpCare offering provides similar offerings as EaseCare and InstaCare, but with a focus on enterprises providing care for employees. 

“Millions of people are not getting the care they need, especially in our rural, remote and indigenous communities,” Yue said in a statement. “Our digital mental health technologies and programs are designed to meet the diverse needs of each person where they are at in their own journey, on their schedule and at their convenience.”

Accelerate Fund III was launched in 2020 by the Alberta Enterprise Corporation, part of the Government of Alberta, to provide capital to early-stage Alberta tech startups to help them grow revenues and their teams, as well as get their products to market and help secure early customers. 

Last July, Accelerate Fund III co-led Calgary-based WaitWell’s $1.5 million CAD seed round to help expand its queue management and service-delivery software and move into new markets. The fund also backed Calgary emissions-management company Arolytics as it raised a $3.5-million seed round to scale and move into the United States. 

Care Group says its platform is being used by the Central Alberta Child Advocacy Center to provide mental health support to youth and their families. The company also says it has “a growing roster” of urban, remote, and First Nations communities using Care Group for mental health and addictions support. 

“As clinicians with decades of experience in healthcare, the founding team deeply understands the needs and challenges from both a patient and service provider perspective,” Accelerate Fund III Investment Associate Yasmine Al-Hussein said in a statement. “We’ve been impressed with CARE Group’s strong traction to modernize and digitize mental health treatment within clinics and agencies, rural communities and Indigenous communities.” 

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash.