Swedish Health Tech Startup Lifesum Secures $10 Million in Series B Funding to Accelerate Global Expansion

Jul 18, 2016 23:52 CST Updated 23:52

What happens when you integrate smartphones, wearable devices, the Internet of Things (IoT), and the concepts of social control and healthcare cost containment? The answer is a health-tech startup favored by venture capital.

On July 18, Lifesum, a health startup headquartered in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, announced that it had secured $10 million in Series B financing. The round was led by Nokia Growth Partners (NGP), the venture capital arm of Nokia, with participation from three other venture capital firms: Draper Esprit, Bauer Media Group, and SparkLabs Global Ventures.

The Lifesum app tracks users’ dietary and exercise habits. According to the company, it currently has 15 million users. While this figure is modest compared to the 80 million users of MyFitnessPal—a lifestyle utility app acquired last February by the renowned sportswear brand Under Armour—Lifesum’s ambitions extend far beyond merely tracking data such as “what users had for breakfast.”

Currently, Lifesum is seeking collaborations with enterprises in other sectors, including food, fitness, wellness, DNA, and pharmaceuticals. For instance, earlier this year, Lifesum partnered with Crussh, a UK-based healthy food and juice manufacturer, by providing user data on malnutrition in the London area. Leveraging these insights, Crussh can develop customized nutritional juices for local consumers with dietary deficiencies.

Henrik Torstensson, CEO of Lifesum, stated that the company would use this latest round of investment to expand globally, with a particular focus on accelerating its entry into the U.S. market. He said:

In my view, Nokia Growth Partners possesses certain resources in Silicon Valley that Lifesum can leverage immediately for business expansion, especially since the U.S. market is becoming increasingly important to us.

Nokia Growth Partners has invested in numerous startups, including the local travel service booking website GetYourGuide, the language-learning app Babbel, the mobile game and app development company MAG Interactive, and the artificial intelligence startup WorkFusion, among others.

Walter Masalin from Nokia Growth Partners led this round of investment, stating:

The digital health industry remains in its early stages, but with the rapid advancement of mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, we are seeing the emergence of many promising startups.

For Vishal Gulati, a venture capital partner at Draper Esprit, they are highly interested in the surge of digital technology emerging in Scandinavia (Northern Europe).

In the health app markets of many European countries, Lifesum holds a leading position, including in Scandinavia, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia. Notably, Lifesum is a third-party health application supported by Apple Watch and was one of the product launch partners for Google Fit, Google Now, and Samsung Gear S2.

Original source: techcrunch.com

Reposted from: 36Kr