Malaysian digital health service provider Naluri Pte Ltd (Naluri) announced Tuesday it has secured a $7 million pre-series B funding round led by Pruksa Group, Thailand’s leading real estate development group whose business is also involved in digital health technology and healthcare operations through Vimut Hospitals.
Pruksa Group’s investment is joined by Bertelsmann Investments from Germany and Striders Corporation from Japan and is supported by several returning investors, including M Venture Partners (MVP), Palm Drive Capital, and INP Capital, Naluri said in a statement.
The new funding is earmarked for Naluri’s strategic expansion in Thailand and will further bolster the company’s operations in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.
Naluri’s digital health service and healthcare cost-containment solution deploys technology to deliver integrated person-centred care to transform the lives of people at risk of, or managing, the most pervasive chronic and mental health conditions.
Chronic health conditions, including type two diabetes, hypertension, obesity and hyperlipidemia are reaching endemic proportions in the region, reducing work capacity, life expectancy, and economic productivity.
The company, founded in 2017, pairs evidence-based interventions and human-led expertise with a digital platform (via the Naluri app) to deliver significant health outcomes at a lower cost to healthcare payors.
In a region where shortages of registered professionals constrain care delivery, Naluri also empowers its team of health and wellness experts with data and the company’s proprietary artificial intelligence (AI)-augmented coaching platform, decision support systems and self-help digital tools to deliver highly personalised behavioural health programmes at scale.
Expanding beyond its digital chronic disease management and employee assistance programmes, the company’s breakthrough is its ability to combine an organisation’s historical claims data with organisation-wide health screenings to understand and forecast future healthcare demands and costs.
Then, coupling the health risk data with regular health monitoring, Naluri delivers proactive early interventions that prevent the onset of additional medical complications that often lead to escalating costs.
The company, founded by serial entrepreneur Azran Osman-Rani and medical systems expert Jeremy Ting, is backed by prominent investors, including Integra Partners, Pathology Asia (via Biomark), M Venture Partners (MVP) and Sumitomo Corporation Equity Asia.
Naluri serves more than 75 of the region’s leading employers in industries that include financial services, oil and gas, property development, telecommunications, tertiary education and aviation.
It offers healthcare payors effective corporate wellness solutions across Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia, with imminent plans for expansion into the Philippines, Hong Kong and Australia.
According to Naluri, Southeast Asia faces an epidemic of chronic non-communicable diseases, now responsible for 60 percent of deaths in the region. The problem stems from environmental factors that promote tobacco use, an unhealthy diet, and inadequate physical activity and is made more urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately affected those with pre-existing conditions and further disrupted essential prevention and treatment services.
The issue is so pervasive that the World Health Organization (WHO) welcomed a new Heads of State and Government Group to get the world back on track to reduce premature deaths from noncommunicable diseases by a third – in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
With the exacerbation of mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, stress and burnout on the back of Covid-containment measures, Naluri said the demand for accessible, affordable and scalable solutions has spurred its growth.
“We must do more to not only manage chronic health and mental health conditions, but we must also prevent them as well. We must do so quickly and effectively. Global markets have tightened, but this investment affirms Naluri’s mission and fast-tracks our efforts to deliver support to more deserving people in the region,” said Naluri Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Azran Osman-Rani.