14 Jun 2019 News in English 3 min. to read

Singapore startup Biofourmis raises $35m, plans headquarters move to Boston

Kuldeep Singh Rajput, founder of Biofourmis.

Biofourmis, a Singapore digital health startup, said it raised $35 million from investors and will move its headquarters to Boston.

“We would like to be closer to our customers, expand our commercial operations in the US, and also attract high quality talent,” founder and chief executive Kuldeep Singh Rajput said in an e-mail. “Boston is the right place to do so, with the right ecosystem for a digital therapeutics company.”

Biofourmis, which Rajput founded in 2015, makes a system that combines biosensors, artificial intelligence software, and a mobile app to monitor patients with chronic conditions such as heart failure and pulmonary disease. The company says its system can predict the onset of medical problems days in advance, alert health care providers, and even intervene using the app to optimize therapy.

Rajput, who has raised a total of $44 million, has 40 employees in Singapore and 12 in Boston at 33 Arch St. He expects to have more than 100 people split between the two cities by the end of the year.

The Boston headquarters team will focus on data science, clinical and regulatory affairs, sales, and operations, according to Rajput, while the Singapore office will be responsible for software development and sales in Asia.

The latest Series B funding round was led by Sequoia India, part of Sequoia Capital, with MassMutual Ventures Southeast Asia, a venture fund of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., as co-lead. EDBI, a Singapore government-linked strategic investor, and Chinese online health care platform Jianke also participated in the round, along with existing investors Openspace Ventures, Aviva Ventures, and SGInnovate.

Massachusetts has emerged as a hub for digital health, with more than 350 companies, research organizations, investment firms, startup accelerators, and health care providers and insurers. In 2016, Governor Charlie Baker launched a public-private partnership aimed at supporting and expanding the industry, which is closely linked to the state’s biotech and health care sectors.

Rajput also has connections to the area, having worked as a researcher at the MIT Media Lab in 2014.

“Our new funds will allow us to rapidly expand our workforce and commercialization efforts, while further demonstrating the clinical efficacy of our digital therapeutics platform through research and development,” he said in a statement.

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