Medical education startup Osmosis raises $2.5M while growing its user base and video library

Osmosis, a health education startup founded by Johns Hopkins medical students that maintains its base in Baltimore, raised $2.5 million in new funding, according to CEO Shiv Gaglani.
The anchor investor in the round was Greycroft, the venture capital firm cofounded by pioneering investor Alan Patricof. Former Buzzfeed President Greg Coleman was also an investor in the round.
The company’s platform offers medical education materials that are designed to help make learning complicated and voluminous health and medical content more clear and efficient. These include illustrated videos and study tools such as flashcards and questions. The company also makes print books.
The company has grown its video library in the last year from about 450 to more than 1,000, Gaglani said. With that has come growth, as the company now counts 350,000 active users. Gaglani and cofounder Ryan Haynes started the platform to help others in medical school, have also found growth among medical professionals, as well as patients and their families. Gaglani credits the growth to the content getting shared through a network effect and digging into topic areas.

The company has 50 million views to date and an audience of 850,000 users on its YouTube channel, Gaglani said. It offers a “Prime” subscription that opens up access to all of the content, and is used in more than two dozen health professional schools, according to the company. It’s also added a handful of new print titles.
“Osmosis’ approach to supplemental education is truly dramatic and has already had significant impact with medical students and institutions around the world — and, they’re just penetrating the surface,” Patricof, an early investor in companies like Apple, AOL, Huffington Post and theSkimm, said in a statement.
Gaglani is based in Baltimore and works at Brewers Hill Hub in Canton with three others, and has a larger remote team of full-time employees and contractors. Gaglani said the company has benefitted from support in Baltimore. It has local investors including TEDCO and A-Level Capital, and counts MedIQ cofounders Gerry Hartung and Scott Weber, Ken Karpay of Oaklins DeSilva & Philips, Mark Joseph and Baltimore Angels Operations Director Scott Garber as investors.