Meet New Nurx CEO Varsha Rao

While this is my first official week on the job at Nurx, I feel like I’ve been on Team Nurx — first as an early investor and most recently as an advisor — from nearly the beginning. Three years ago a good friend told me about a little startup that allowed women to get prescription birth control through an app. Like most breakthrough ideas it was beautifully simple (at least in theory!) but also urgent and important. It was inspiring to think about the huge impact that increased access to essential reproductive healthcare could have on women’s lives. I had to learn more, so I tracked down the co-founder and CEO Hans Gangeskar to ask if he would meet with me.

Early one morning he met me at the Airbnb office in New York, where I was then Head of Global Operations, and I was impressed by his tangible passion for transforming access to healthcare. Hans and I quickly hit it off and dove deep into a conversation about how technology could be employed to actually bring more humanity to primary care, while delivering the high level of personalization and customer experience Americans have come to expect in nearly every other aspect of their lives.

I jumped in as an investor, and later as an advisor, and watched Nurx steadily and thoughtfully grow to serve more than 200,000 people, while staying true to their commitment to deliver quality care and superior customer service to each one. Next, the founders’ mission of expanding access to essential care drove their decision to launch into PrEP prescriptions and HPV testing — two areas of healthcare in which breaking down barriers can be no less than lifesaving.

Along the way Hans and his co-founder Dr. Edvard Engesaeth grew an amazing team, one that has worked through many of the challenges inherent to innovating within the healthcare system, while maintaining a company culture that is unfailingly optimistic, solutions-seeking, and grounded in the core values that Hans enthusiastically shared with me that morning back in New York.

While I cheered on Nurx from the sidelines I learned even more about mission-driven healthcare as the COO of startup Clover Health. Once I stepped away from Clover I recently took on a strategic consulting role here at Nurx. Being in the office day-to-day I’ve been able to learn more about the people Nurx treats and serves — our birth control, PrEP, and HPV test patients — and I’m impressed and moved by how enthusiastic and loyal they are. The love for Nurx that our community expresses on social media and the grateful messages we receive from happy customers each day are testimony to how hard everyone here works to put patients first at every step.

So when the team approached me to help lead the company into our next chapter, to realize the mission and growth plans, I was really humbled and honored — and I jumped at the chance. I could not be more excited to take the reins to this company that I have admired since the beginning.

Hans and the leadership team’s success building Nurx has placed us in a position to seize some vastly large opportunities, while solving pressing problems that still hinder access to essential components of primary care. Now together as a team I believe we can continue to grow a successful business delivering people the care they deserve, while becoming a model of how healthcare can do better.

This blog pro­vides infor­ma­tion about telemed­i­cine, health and related sub­jects. The blog content and any linked materials herein are not intended to be, and should not be con­strued as a substitute for, med­ical or healthcare advice, diagnosis or treatment. Any reader or per­son with a med­ical con­cern should con­sult with an appropriately-licensed physi­cian or other healthcare provider. This blog is provided purely for informational purposes. The views expressed herein are not sponsored by and do not represent the opinions of Nurx™.