Russian startup HealBe, which develops a calorie tracker HealBe GoBe, secured $6.5M in funding from Starta Accelerator launched by Russian-American fund Starta Capital and other investors. It’s not disclosed who led the round, but HealBe gave 10% of its shares for the funding.
Starta Capital accompanies HealBe all the way round from the company’s very beginning. In sJuly 2012 HealBe got the first investment of $200K from Starta Capital and Alexei Girin, and $350K more - in December 2012. Then in March 2014 HealBe launched an Indiegogo campaign for GoBe band and raised over $1 million for its development. Five months later the group of businessmen and Starta Capital Accessor Fund invested $2.6M into the startup. And in May 2015 the company secured $3.5M from a number of investors and business angels led by Starta Capital.
With a total funding of over $10M, Russian startup HealBe is aiming to revolutionize the way you are tracking calories
GoBe fitness tracker counts how much calories you consume and burn by using the patented FLOW Technology. It measures calorie intake through your skin by reading the glucose levels in your cells with an impedance sensor. So, it’s not necessary to manually log the calories you consume because the device auto-logs it for you and knows what you’ve eaten without you telling it. GoBe also automatically measures your blood pressure, heart rate, stress and hydration levels, energy balance and quality of sleep.
After launching an Indiegogo campaign HealBe faced lots of accusations. In particular, several medical professionals claimed it was impossible to non-invasively measure glucose in the blood. Thus, a number of doubters claimed GoBe was a scam which was raising money for the non-existent technology. In September 2014 the independent researchers from St. Petersburg conducted the tests which showed 84.5% accuracy of HealBe functions. Still, a number of foreign journalists who had tested the band had opposite opinions about device functionality. The backers started to receive their GoBe trackers in February 2015.
Now the company is developing the second generation of HealBe GoBe fitness band which is going to use Artificial Intelligence to monitor and measure the activities of user’s body with a better accuracy.
