The new business venture of Eren Bali, a double-major graduate of METU Mathematics and Computer Engineering Departments, has started to be called a unicorn.* Bali, who previously founded Udemy in 2010 and managed to make it a unicorn, this time focuses on the health sector via Carbon Health.
Just like how the primary aim of Udemy was to make education more accessible for everyone, Bali aims at doing the same for healthcare. He realized this need when his mother had a health problem in 2014, and Bali had to take her to numerous specialists in search of a diagnosis by carrying lots of pages long documents and lab records. The same year, he stepped down as CEO of Udemy and moved into the role of chairman. The “serial entrepreneur,” as Forbes defines him, immediately started working on what he thinks of as the next generation of healthcare software and finally founded the company in 2015. Inspired by carbon, the most commonly found element in organic life, Bali wanted to create a patient-facing platform where everyone could easily access healthcare services, including medical records, clinician workflows, revenue cycle management, and thus named the company Carbon Health.
While Carbon Health is only open to users in the U.S. as of now, its revenue in the first quarter of 2021 already surpassed the total revenue in all of last year. The company’s services include primary healthcare, emergency healthcare, and virtual healthcare. Having received investments of $100 million last year, Carbon Health has secured $350 million in 2021 so far. Some experts state that Carbon Health is already worth more than $3 billion with the latest investments it has received.
* “Unicorn” is a term used to describe a business venture with a value of over $1 billion.
