Natural Cycles, a Stockholm, Sweden-based digital contraception and reproductive health company, secured $30m in Series B funding.
The round, which brings total raised by Natural Cycles to over $36m, was led by EQT Ventures, with participation from existing investors Sunstone, E-ventures and Bonnier Growth Media.
The company intends to use the funds to aid clinical research, product development, recruitment from the world of medicine and science, and international expansion. The new capital will expand the team which currently consists of 30 people. Dr Simon P Rowland, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and Medical Advisor to Bayer Plc, UK, and Anita Kraker von Schwarzenfeld, VP of Medical Communications, with an extensive career at Bayer working in women’s health and contraception, have joined the team along with artificial intelligence experts and former CERN particle physicists Olle Lundberg, Vincenzo Lavorini and Eleonora Benhar to aid new clinical studies in the field of contraception and fertility, and support product development.
Co-founded in 2014 by Dr Raoul Scherwitzl and Dr Elina Berglund, Natural Cycles provides an app which aims to prevent pregnancies by empowering women with insight into their body. The app, which uses an advanced and scientific algorithm to accurately predict when a woman is fertile, is currently used by over 500,000 women from over 161 countries.
Natural Cycles is available to download on Android, iOS or can be accessed on the webapp.
In a clinical study, whose results have been published in Contraception Journal, the app was recently shown to be 93% effective with typical use.
HOW IT WORKS
Natural Cycles works by detecting a woman’s ovulation and calculating her fertile days by taking many factors, such as her temperature, period, cycle irregularities and sperm survival, into account. Women are required to take their temperature with a basal thermometer under the tongue in the morning and enter it into the app. The app tells a woman whether it is a “green” day or a “red” day – the former meaning she can have unprotected sex without the risk of a pregnancy, the latter indicating that she cannot and that her partner needs to use a condom. The more data is entered, the more days turn “green” as the app becomes better able to accurately predict when the woman is not fertile, with the algorithm taking into account a host of factors including irregularities in a woman’s cycle. The app also learns and adjusts to women who forget to enter their daily temperature by offering more “red” days. Natural Cycles does not protect against STIs and is recommended for women over 18 years old.
FinSMEs
09/11/2017