Lokum, a Houston-Based Health-Tech Company, Raises $700K in Pre-Seed Funding; Founder Aims to Cut Staffing Costs by Connecting Anesthesia Professionals to Employers. Company financed to enhance platform capabilities and expand market reach.
Lokum on June 3 announced that it has secured $700,000 in pre-seed financing from such high-profiled institutional investors as Houston-based South Loop Ventures and Techstars, JP Morgan.
Driving its momentum is Founder and Chief Executive, Ayoade Joy Ademuyewo, a Nigerian-born nurse anesthesiologist, who investors have described as a “force of nature.”
Co-investing in the round are expert advisors such as Aileen Allen, formerly of Atlassian and a current board member of the Houston Angel Network. Allen also serves as a Go-To Market Venture Advisor at Mercury Fund, Stage 2 Capital, and The Artemis Fund.
Matt Miller, an expert product executive formerly of Houston-based cybersecurity giant Liongard, also participated in the round.
Lokum’s earliest angel investors were nurse anesthesiology colleagues.
Lokum, founded in 2023, is a mobile matchmaking platform that connects medical specialists with healthcare facilities nationwide, cutting out unnecessary intermediaries to address the healthcare staffing crisis in specialties like anesthesiology.
The platform fosters direct communication between professionals and their employers, cost-effective staffing management, and provides highly specialized medical professionals with diverse opportunities, including spot coverage, fixed contracts, per diem roles, and permanent positions.
Lokum addresses the poor visibility into the cost of services in the market, the absence of a definitive, modern marketplace for the exchange of those services, and the high cost of allowing the talent pool to shrink through a dependence on third-party recruitment firms.
The product also aims to leverage provider-centered technology that helps build strong partnerships between providers and facilities, which can ultimately help reduce the increasing cost of supporting anesthesia services.
Lokum launched early pilots in 2023 to identify key markets, acquiring thousands of clinicians in anesthesiology and serving clients across nearly 200 hospitals and surgery centers in 20 states.
In May, the company participated in a demo day as one of 2024’s cohort for the Google for Startups Accelerator Program-North America, where the team spent 10 weeks in a technical deep-dive for Machine Learning applications within the platform.
Lokum will remain a part of the Google for Startups Alumni Network.
COMMENT FROM FOUNDER, Dr. Ayoade “Joy” Ademuyewo:
In 2020, elective surgical services were shut down and many anesthesiology clinicians were out of a job. I was working as an independent contract CRNA at the time. One of my colleagues was facing a 90-day pause in his income after three years in graduate school. He had little to no visibility into the job market and had twins at home to take care of. He reached out to me when panic set in about finding work. Many other colleagues were also struggling to find their footing in navigating the job-finding landscape as medical specialists.
Third-party recruitment agencies stepped in to make record profits, inflating market rates and shrinking the national talent pool with devastating consequences for the employers who rely on them. I noticed an increase in colleagues who reported being taken advantage of in the race for some third-parties to present their resumes to employers, something I had experienced myself. All of this prompted me to start asking questions. What we realized was staggering.
Healthcare organizations spend $26 billion annually to support a crippling dependence on third-party agencies for connecting with clinical staff. Technological solutions that are pointed precisely to streamline and strengthen the relationships between highly specialized clinicians and their future employers are vital to alleviating this detrimental dependance, and central to our mission. I’m incredibly proud to have earned the trust of my colleagues, investors, team, and mentors in solving this complex problem.
COMMENT FROM INVESTOR, Jerry Varnado, South Loop Ventures
Lokum has found a way to disrupt an organically inefficient and expensive market with an elegant solution that doesn’t just save hospitals time and money, but also increases the pool of specialty providers in a market that is consistently strapped for such expertise. This is what disruption in healthcare looks like – scalable commercial solutions that contribute towards better patient care, and we’re happy to be part of Lokum’s journey.
For media inquiries, please contact Dr. Ayoade Ademuyewo, CRNA | Founder, CEO, Lokum
214-797-0514