Health-tech device startup Diabeto eyes $50K through crowdfunding platform Indiegogo

Mumbai-based startup Diabeto Medtech India Pvt Ltd has raised over $11,000 (Rs 6.75 lakh) via crowdfunding platform Indiegogo for its flagship product which is a hardware device that wirelessly syncs glucometer readings with smartphones.

"We completed our (initial) target within just three days of launching the campaign. We now hope to reach $50,000 (about Rs 30 lakh) by the time the campaign ends on March 5, 2015," Shreekant Pawar, co-founder of Diabeto, told Techcircle.in.

Diabeto plans to use the money for entering into the manufacturing phase and shipping 700 devices and also adding new features on the app. "We have got backing from more than 110 people so far. We are planning to start shipping the product from March," he added.

Diabeto was set up in January 2012 by serial entrepreneurs—Pawar who is a management graduate besides Amir Shaikh and Hemanshu Jain, who are engineers. Besides running their own ventures in the tech space, Shaikh has also worked at Motorola, Celoxica, Merriam-Webster & Encyclopaedia Britannica while Jain has worked at Ticketplease.com, Media2win, HDFC, Yahoo and eClerk.

The company had earlier raised $40,000 equity free  grant  from Start-Up Chile  programme and  $30,000  from  an  angel  investor with the help of which it had entered the Alpha  testing phase.

What is Diabeto?

Diabeto  is  a  hardware  device,  which wirelessly  transmits  blood   glucose  readings from  a  glucometer  into  a  smartphone which can be analysed  with  the  help  of  a smartphone   application. With  the application, one  can  track  mood,  medication  (insulin intake),  physical   activity  and  also carbohydrate  intake.  The  user  can  then relate  these  factors  with  their  blood glucose levels. The entire system is cloud based.

The device is presently priced at $49 (Rs 3,000).

Earlier, RHLvision had raised $200,000 in crowdfunding from Indiegogo.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)