Naluri exceeds target to raise US$1.5mil in Pre-Series A funding

• Funds will be used to scale digital therapeutics regionally
• The round was led by Global Founders Capital

NALURI, a Malaysian MSC-status digital health technology company completed its Pre-Series A fund-raising round, led by Global Founders Capital.

Other investors in this round include the Stanford-StartX Fund, TH Capital from Malaysia, private investors including medical doctors, and investors from Naluri’s earlier seed round.

Naluri’s founders had targeted a fund-raising goal of US$1 million (RM4.11 million) but surpassed it by 50% to close at US$1.5 million, due to increased investor interest and demand after it became the first Malaysian startup accepted into the StartX’s founder community via the Spring 2019 cohort.

StartX is one of three global accelerators to receive a ‘Platinum Plus’ rating in the annual Seed Accelerator Ranking Project.

Naluri is a Southeast Asian pioneer in the field of digital therapeutics, which delivers evidence-based therapeutic interventions to patients or those at risk of diseases, using software programs to prevent, manage, or treat a medical disorder or disease.

“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 chief executive officer and co-founder Azran Osman-Rani (pic).

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.”

Having assembled a team of over 30 full-time professionals including PhDs in psychology, in-house clinical dietitians, data scientists, product designers and software engineers, Naluri is now setting its sights on regional expansion.

“After encouraging results from our first year of operations, which saw about 60% of our users achieve at least one clinically significant health improvement that reduces the risks of diabetes or heart diseases by 30%-50%, and our core clients continuing to extend their partnership with us into Phase 2 roll-outs, we have started work to extend our service to larger markets across Southeast Asia,” says president and co-founder Dr Jeremy Ting.

He adds, “The additional capital raised allows us to make senior business development hires and start teams in overseas markets”.

Naluri expects to continue to grow aggressively over the next 12 months and launch its Series A round next year, where it hopes to demonstrate consistent replicability of its health outcomes and a much larger user base from more partnerships with leading insurers, corporate employers, healthcare providers, and pharmaceutical companies.

It intends to build specialised digital therapeutic intervention programmes for diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, renal diseases and chronic pain – where lifestyle behavioural modifications and psychological support can lead to significant quality of life improvements.