Delhi-based BeatO (short for beating the ring ‘O’ of Diabetes), a diabetes management startup using technology, has raised an institutional round of $1.3 million led by Leo Capital and co-led by Blume ventures.

“We are extremely excited to associate with partners like Leo and Blume. India is expected to have 100M diabetics by 2030. This puts tremendous pressure on all stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem both from a cost and well-being perspective to specially cater to this large demographic. This funding is a re-enforcement to the fact that we are solving a problem of massive scale", said Gautam Chopra, Co-Founder, and CEO, BeatO.

“With this funding, we plan to continue adding greater value to our customers through even better technology and distribution. We will also supplement our existing range of product categories including diabetic snacks and specialty foods. Our goal is to be an indispensable ally to a person living with diabetes”, added Yash Sehgal & Abhishek Kumar, Co-founders, BeatO.

Launched in September 2015 by Gautam Chopra, Yash Sehgal and Abhishek Kumar, BeatO is a full stack platform for people living with diabetes. It provides comprehensive platform dedicated to improving the lives of those living with diabetes with a unique mobile based monitoring solution, combined with diabetes-specific products such as diabetic snacks, specialty food, footwear etc. BeatO focuses on addressing all needs of their customers under one roof and supports them in making the right choices.

BeatO makes blood glucose monitoring easy with its smartphone-based glucometer combined with support from experts. This is augmented by their wide range of diabetes-specific food and retail products, thereby catering to all the needs of a person with diabetes. Started just over 2 years ago, BeatO currently serves 25,000 active customers in more than 1,500 cities, some even as far as Baramullah in Kashmir. This depicts the powerful impact that a virtual and holistic solution can have in providing healthcare to everyone. BeatO is currently fulfilling over 5,000 transactions a month.

[caption id="attachment_123833" align="aligncenter" width="971"]BeatO smartphone-based Glucometer BeatO smartphone-based Glucometer[/caption]

Speaking about the funding, Rajul Garg, Founder of Leo Capital, said, “India is the diabetes capital of the world. We have looked deeply at chronic disease solutions and BeatO has been able to demonstrate an approach that diabetics find useful month over month. BeatO’s focus on a solution very unique to India is what attracted us”.

Arpit Agarwal, Principal, Blume Ventures, said, “BeatO is different from other players in the segment given their approach allows patients to manage diabetes effortlessly by having a wide array of healthy lifestyle choices available to them on a single platform. The founding team is perhaps one of the best in the industry and we feel confident that they will capture the opportunity in this space successfully.”

The startup had previously raised an angel round from a few individual investors including Rajeev Chitrabhanu, an early investor in Nazara Technologies, Rentomojoetc and Vishal Sampat, who besides being an angel investor was also the Founder of Convonix, India’s largest digital agency acquired by Publicis.

BeatO has grown 10X in revenue within the last one year. It boasts of having facilitated more than 250,000 glucose readings and has over 80% repeat order rate of acquired customers. The company plans to continue adding products across categories which are useful for diabetics and leveraging technology to make them accessible in the near future.

Leo Capital was founded in 2018 by Rajul Garg and Shwetank Verma. Rajul has been a prolific entrepreneur and angel investor in the Indian ecosystem. BeatO is among Leo Capital’s early investments as a fund. Leo Capital is focused on investing in high growth, early-stage technology startups in India.

Other startups in India working in diabetes related management and services are -- Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre, which raised $10.23 million in Series A funding led by Lok Capital advised Growth Fund, Bangalore based Achira Labs, which has devised a way to hand weave diabetes test strips from silk. An another startup called Cooey technologies is also a promising startup that made news when, in 2016, it launched India’s first IOT glucometer that wirelessly syncs data with a smartphone.

About Blume Ventures, it is an early stage venture fund launched in 2010, that backs startups with both fundings as well as active mentoring and support. It invested $1 million in Gurgaon-based online retailer Spinny, in June 2017, thereafter it invested in online grocery startup MilkBasket, in August last year, followed by $1 million investment in car service startup Pitstop, in September 2017.

Blume Ventures' portfolio consists of more than 70 active companies including Grey Orange Robotics, Unacademy, Tricog Health, Locus, Healthifyme, Mettl, Exotel, Belong, Instamojo, and many more. Recently, tech research firm CB Insights ranked Blume Ventures as the leading India tech investor based on the number of investments made since the fund’s inception.
Advertisements

Post a Comment

Previous Post Next Post
Like this content? Sign up for our daily newsletter to get latest updates.