Russian company BestDoctor raises $26 million

Its Virtual Clinic platform provides telemedicine services to private companies and it plans to extend it to the consumer market this year.

Mark Sanevich, BestDoctor’s co-founder and CEO, told techcrunch.com: “We are pursuing a new goal and building a platform with the best medical services that can be entrusted with any health-related issues.

“The platform will consolidate all of BestDoctor’s products to become an example of a client and product-oriented approach to medicine. A new type of healthcare service focused on the patient and their needs, is urgently needed – not just in Russia, but globally.”

The move will also see them enter the European digital health market, which is currently growing by 28 per cent every year.

Anton Farlenkov, Managing Director at Winter Capital Advisors said: “The medical insurance industry is undergoing a digital transformation, as many services move online, creating greater accessibility and improving usability for consumers. BestDoctor is at the forefront of this revolution, accelerating the medical insurance field’s transition to a qualitatively new level.”

Meanwhile, Cyprus is seeing an influx of Russian tourists after reopening its borders last month. The island is dependent on tourists from nations such as Russia, as quarantine requirements in other countries make travel complicated.

In 2019, around four million people visited the war-partitioned island’s Greek-run south, and a record 1.4 million of them were Britons, with younger holidaymakers arriving to enjoy hotspots such as Ayia Napa, and the older crowd heading to the resort of Paphos in the west.