Backed by Korean tech giant Naver, Taiwan’s PranaQ secures $3m in seed funding

PranaQ, a healthcare technology startup, successfully completed $ 3 million in Seed round funding raising. The round was participated by multiple global venture capital firms, including DSC Investment, Smilegate Investment, NAVER D2SF, and Lighthouse Combined Investment.

With the new funding, PranaQ aims to acquire FDA certification on the first product and put more resources into global marketing.

In particular, NAVER D2SF, CVC of NAVER, Korea's largest internet company and global tech platform, joined the round as a strategic investor for a potential partnership on the back of their recent focus on healthcare as one of the new business drivers.

There is no effective method to track Sleep Apnea Syndrome. In the US, patients need to go to the sleep center and wear all kinds of sensors to sleep here for the night, so clinical laboratory technologists can analyze the data and give the report. In addition, the healthcare does not cover the diagnosis of Sleep Apnea Syndrome “The nowadays solution for diagnosing Sleep Apnea Syndrome causes trouble to the patients,” said Jerry Chen, cofounder and CEO of PranaQ.

PranaQ is a digital healthcare company, developing wearable medical devices with AI-based biosignal processing algorithms, including technology developed at Duke University. The company's first endeavor is around detecting and monitoring sleep disorders including sleep apnea, to help people have better knowledge and control of their sleep and overall health condition.

Sooseob Won at DSC Investment, the lead investor of the round said "PranaQ has developed innovative AI-powered algorithms and compact sleep testing device near commercialization, which can replace conventional complicated sleep studies. We decided to invest in PranaQ as we expect that its offerings will give many people easier and greater access to better sleep and further provide unique values to hospitals, insurance companies, and other related parties."

“PranaQ is quite an international team. We have team members from different countries and that is also the reason we got connected to Naver. We hope that through Naver’s resources we can make our product reach more people, ” said Chen.