25/07/2019 – Malaysia based digital health startup NALURI announces today the closing of it’s Pre-Series A funding.
The funding was led by Global Founders Capital and joined by Stanford-StartX Fund and TH Capital. The round also sees the return investments of existing investors.
The round of funding overshot Naluri’s initial funding target of US$1M by 50%, closing at US$1.5M. This is fueled by increased interest and demand from investors after the company was accepted into the StartX’s founder community via the Spring 2019 cohort, marking it the first Malaysia company to do so.
A non-profit startup accelerator and founder community associated with Stanford University, StarX is one of the three global accelerators that received a ‘Platinum Plus’ rating in the Seed Accelerator Ranking Project.
Founded in 2017 by former CEO of iflix and AirAsia X Bhd Azran Osman-Rani, medical doctors Dr. Jeremy Ting and Dr. Hariyati Shahrima, Naluri positions itself in the Southeast Asian market as a pioneer in the field of digital therapeutics.
“We focus on the intersection of chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, and mental health, and provide affordable and convenient access to a structured professional health coaching 16-week programme from a coordinated team of psychologists, dietitians, doctors, fitness coaches, career and financial coaches, to provide behavioural change and psychological support in a holistic manner,” says Azran, chief executive officer and co-founder of Naluri.
He adds, “Current healthcare services and wellness programmes do not provide enough on-going support outside of the hospital or clinic, or are only focused on transactional, one-off consultation sessions. They tend to track activities such as steps or calorie counting, and not clinically-significant health outcomes such as weight reduction, blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol reduction, or quantifiable improvements in levels of depression, anxiety, and stress.”
The first year of Naluri’s operations sees encouraging result as about 60% of users achieve at least one clinically significant health improvement. The startup also sees core clients extending their partnership relationships into Phase 2 roll-outs, prompting the company to extend their service across Southeast Asia.
Following the injection of fresh capital, Dr. Jeremy Ting revealed the company will make senior business development hires and creating teams for overseas markets.
Following this successful funding round, the company projected to launch its Series A in 2020.
