Ubenwa, a cutting-edge healthtech firm that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to identify newborns between the ages of 0 and 6 months, has secured $2.5 million in pre-seed capital to scale its operations and implement its go-to-market plan.
Radical Ventures led Ubenwa’s $2.5 million pre-seed round, which also included returning investor AIX Ventures, entrepreneurs Pieter Abbeel and Richard Socher, Turing award winner Yoshua Bengio, Canadian politician Marc Bellemare, and Google Brain’s Hugo Larochelle.
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Sanjana Basu, an investor from Radical Ventures, will join Ubenwa’s board as part of the fundraising collaboration. Basu expressed confidence in the investment in Ubenwa, stating that demand for digital products such as Ubenwa’s software solutions — mobile app and API — is still increasing.
Why Investors Invested
Investors believed the background of the founder Charles Onu could assist the startup to accomplish its objectives. Onu has experience in the medical industry and considerable AI practise.
“Supported by a strong clinical foundation, Ubenwa has developed a proprietary innovation for an underserved and important market,” Sanjana Basu investor in this round said. “Deciphering a baby’s cry using machine learning can open up a range of possibilities in the consumer and clinical paediatrics market where demand for better digital products is only growing.”
A Look At What The Startup Does
Ubenwa, founded in 2017, is pioneering an automated sound-based diagnosis solution for infants through the use of cutting-edge AI and years of scientific research.
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Ubenwa, while a separate firm, is a result of Onu’s team’s study in Mila, a world-renowned AI centre in Quebec, Canada, since 2017. However, Ubenwa’s influence is felt in more than one countries. Ubenwa boasts the largest and most diversified archive of clinically annotated infant cry sounds, thanks to strategic agreements with major institutions in Nigeria, Brazil, and Canada.
In a statement, Onu, who is also the CEO of Ubenwa, described Ubenwa’s solution as one that distinguishes between an infant’s natural screams and disease-causing cries for aid.
“Ubenwa is building a diagnostic tool that understands when a baby’s cry is actually a cry for medical attention,” he said. “Ultimately, our goal is to be a translator for baby cry sounds, providing a non-invasive way to monitor medical conditions everywhere you find a baby: delivery rooms, neonatal and paediatric intensive care units, nurseries, and even homes.”
According to the press release, Ubenwa has created algorithms that analyse cry activity, detect acoustic biomarkers, and anticipate irregularities, allowing infant cries to be converted into potential diagnoses. Ubenwa’s programme outperformed APGAR scoring, the generally accepted physical examination at delivery, in a successful pilot to detect neurological impairment caused by birth asphyxia.
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Dr. Guilherme Sant’Anna, a neonatologist at Montreal Children’s Hospital and professor at McGill University, praised Ubenwa’s methods further, expressing his organization’s eagerness to partner with UIbenwa.
“Cry analysis has the potential to provide critical information for identifying babies with evolving brain problems,” she stated in the press release. “A non-invasive diagnostic tool of this nature would be a powerful clinical resource for paediatric medicine. We are thrilled to be collaborating with Ubenwa and realise this through well-controlled clinical studies.”
Ubenwa is presently allowing parents and hospitals to sign up as early users of its software on its platform. According to Onu, this private testing will assist the company in gathering thorough use-case data that will be utilised to develop Ubenwa’s suite of infant cry-diagnosis software.
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Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexperts.com/view_expert/charles-rapulu-udoh