Looking at 2013, it is probably fair to say that the two hottest areas in Northern Europe at the moment are Gaming and Health. Perhaps the two are almost opposites of the spectrum and as much as I love gaming, I can’t help to think how important are startups that can measure success in lives saved as opposed to money made. Unfortunately they do not get as much hype as many other companies and often escape the radar.
For example there is Mendor, a company focusing on one very specific target market – people with Diabetes. When it comes to diabetes, it is extremely important to know your glucose levels (blood sugar) and track daily changes in order to manage the disease. Missing measurements can mean not doing the insulin injection at the right time which can have severe consequences on one’s life. To tackle the problem, most people use blood glucose meters.
There is a very wide variety of them, but Mendor has come up with one that helps you get the measurement very fast and perhaps most importantly – discreetly. Which their users seem to value. With alternative devices they are perhaps able to get the results just as fast, but because of the difficulty of measuring it discreetly, they tend to put it off until they are out of the shopping mall or the gym, which might cause a problem down the line.
However, this is not all the Mendor does, one other and perhaps more important aspect is the software they built with it. The Mendor Balance can help you manage the disease by putting all your glucose measurements in the cloud. They work with nearly all blood glucose meters and allows you to track your glucose level behaviour. Later, you can share this data with your doctors and help them make better decisions. For instance it can show you your average number of measurements per day, average number of blood glucose results, the number of low/high values, etc.
We are a little ashamed that we have not covered the company before, considering that they have previously raised an €8.1 million round in 2011 from Risto Sillasmaa, Finnvera Venture Capital, Life Sciences Partners, Finnish Industry Investments, Ilmarinen and Blothom. This just goes to show how much hype we get from more “attractive” industries and that we need to keep an eye out for companies that try to provide real solutions to real problems.
Today, the company announced a €4.7 million investment round aimed at international expansion. The round came from both existing and new investors. Which makes sense, considering there is more than 347 million people with diabetes and they all need some sort of a solution to control the disease. In total the company is said to have raised over €16 million.
