Image credit: Veri
We all know that food plays a very important role in our lives, however, most of us eat optimally for our bodies for better health. This is where Helsinki-based Veri is making the difference. With Veri, you get instant feedback on your meals from your glucose, giving you an outlook of how the food you eat, exercise, and sleep all affect your metabolism daily.
Besides, Veri can also help discover the right foods for you by comparing different meals and diets. Basically, it is designed for anyone who wants to improve their wellbeing by understanding how their body reacts to the food they eat.
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Veri raises Seed funding
In a recent development, the company has raised $4M (approx €3.28M) in its Seed round of funding led by PROFounders. In addition, the round also saw participation from investors including Lifeline Ventures, Accel with angel investors like Johannes Schildt (CEO and co-founder of Kry/Livi) and Kristian Ranta (CEO and co-founder of Meru Health). Besides, existing investor Lifeline Ventures also invested in this round.
“What, how, and when you eat matters”
Veri was founded in 2019 by Anttoni Aniebonam, Verneri Jaamuru, and Frans Lehmusvaara. Speaking about the idea behind the startup, the founders said they all had issues with their health and to tackle these issues, they started working on Veri to build something that would promote prevention, transparency, and collaboration to the medical and the health community.
The founders mention in a blogpost, “The idea of empowering people to take charge of their own health grew extremely strong within us. After all, as history tells, underdog communities and individuals start revolutions. Our product, the combination of Veri’s app and the wearable glucose sensor, is able to give people just that – an approach to help everyone make better food choices in an effortless and deeply personalised way.”
How does Veri work?
Veri is powered by continuous glucose monitors (CGM). The platform currently uses Abbott FreeStyle Libre sensor – the sensor provides real-time CGM for people with diabetes. The Veri app supports only this sensor at this moment – it is waterproof and has a 14-day wear time.
The sensor measures your glucose levels from your blood through a flexible filament. To get a glucose reading, you press Scan on your Veri app and place your iPhone near the sensor. The sensor can monitor automatically your glucose levels up to eight hours from your last reading.
When you get started with Veri, you can apply the sensor on your arm with the help of the Veri app. To activate a new sensor, you must initialise by scanning the sensor with the Veri app – this takes up to one hour.
Currently, Veri’s one sensor is for €89 or two sensors for €149 per month. Once subscribed, the company provides you with one or two sensors each month, depending on your choice. You can activate and use the sensors on the Veri app.
Funds for growth and development
According to the blogpost, “For the last year we’ve been extremely focused on building the product together with our, today 1,500 people strong, community. We’ve talked with hundreds about the ways we should further develop our product and make it as valuable and as intuitive as possible. We’ve grown our team of 4 Veritians to 15. We’ve made progress but are no way close to being done.”
Hence, the raised capital will help the company focus on further developing the product, hiring new talents, and expanding its customer base. Besides, the company has also announced that it will begin shipping to its US customers this week.
Besides, the company is also working towards adding new features to its app, launching an Android app, and working on other improvements such as the new UI update and building a data-driven recommendation engine.
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