OxiWear, a medtech startup based in Arlington, has secured $1.25 million in seed funding to make continuous oxygen monitoring and low-oxygen alerting more effective.
The oversubscribed funding round, which surpassed its goal by $500k, was led by GAP Funds with participation from ed Leonsis, The Paul & Rose Carter Foundation, Paul Caicedo, Future Communities Capital, Gaingels, Halcyon Fund, Hourglass Venture Partners, TiE DC and Boston Chapters, and Tysons Angel Group. Ted Leonsis, Founder & CEO OF Monumental Sports & Entertainment, said about his participation in the round:
“I’ve been a proud, early supporter of Shavini and her life-saving work and I congratulate her on not only meeting her pre-seed funding round target – but decisively beating it. It’s a testament to how in-demand her product is and how smartly she has built her company around it. I expect she will only continue to grow, and I happily stand by her to offer advice whenever she needs it.”
OxiWear has been developing its ear-wearable oxygen monitoring device since being founded in 2019. The device not only measures oxygen saturation levels with a high degree of accuracy but also alerts its user when oxygen levels drop significantly, making it especially useful for patients and athletes. Shavini Fernando, founder and CEO of OxiWear, said about the technology:
“OxiWear is a product that I developed to help patients like me – those living with pulmonary hypertension. Through our research, we learned that there is a larger market for oxygen monitoring including elite athletes, high-altitude travelers, and patients with diseases such as COPD, sleep apnea, and Covid-19.”
The funding will be used by OxiWear to boost its go-to-market product development efforts as well as to enter its beta testing phase, which will allow it to release the device by 2022. The startup believes that the non-intrusive nature, high-accuracy measurement, and alerting features of the device will allow it to become a leading player in the medtech and sportech market as existing solutions tend to fail in at least one of these categories.
