A company that has completed the Y Combinator accelerator program completed the Series A fundraising round for Inito, which Fireside Ventures led and had a total funding of $6 million. The fertility monitor and kit offered by the new company are intended to provide consumers with simple-to-read fertility diagnostic findings that are shown straight on their phone in only ten minutes.
Aayush Rai, the company’s current CEO, and Varun A. Venkatesan, the current CTO, both formerly worked for the multinational MedTech corporation Siemens. The Bengaluru, India-based firm was established in 2015. While Rai was working on product development, Venkatesan was conducting research for medical devices and supplies. The two individuals became close when paddling together on Sundays. They had conversations about how they wanted to spend their lives doing something that had a real and positive effect on other people’s lives. They ultimately decided to quit their employment and launch Inito to develop tools that would allow individuals to better understand and control their health at home.
Standard at-home ovulation tests forecast your fertile days by monitoring estrogen and luteinizing hormone (LH). Still, they do not detect the hormone that verifies your ovulation, the progesterone metabolite PdG. PdG is a byproduct of the conversion of progesterone to another hormone. On a single test strip, Inito detects estrogen, luteinizing hormone (LH), progesterone metabolite (PdG), and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH).
The monitor, test strips, and access to the Inito app are all included in the package as standard. The monitor is designed to be attached to your smartphone and can scan high-density test strips accurately. Inito will remind you to take a pregnancy test on specific days and walk you through the process step-by-step once you have registered for the app and inputted your cycle information. After soaking the test strip in urine, you attach the monitor to your phone and place it on the monitor. After that, you insert the test strip.
When using other types of standard tests, you will receive “yes/no” answers, and you will need to use a variety of test strips to keep a record of fertile days and verify ovulation. Inito gives you the exact numerical values of your reproductive hormones and tailors the findings to your body. It provides a complete picture of your fertile window of six days and also verifies whether or not you truly ovulated by analyzing the rise in the progesterone metabolite PdG.
According to the organization, if you have irregular menstrual cycles, you need genuine data to pinpoint exactly when you ovulate and when the optimal moment is for you to attempt to conceive a child.
“Unlike other products that leave the interpretation of hormone values up to the user, our app looks at the evolution of four hormones together and determines if the fertility rating for that day is low, high, or peak and if ovulation has indeed occurred in this cycle,” Rai told TechCrunch. “Ovulation has indeed occurred in this cycle.” “Using the most recent developments in artificial intelligence, we have taken this one step further by providing an explanation in natural language as to why a result was given.”
The Inito Fertility Monitor has been granted clearance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be sold as a Class I medical device, which means it does not need to comply with the FDA’s premarket notice filing requirements.
The fertility monitor beginning set costs $149 and comes with 15 test strips in addition to the actual monitoring gadget. The cost of a pack of refill strips is $49. Both goods are offered for sale on Amazon as well as on Inito.
The business intends to use the newly acquired funds to develop even more cutting-edge analytics with the assistance of AI. According to Rai, the fact that users of Inito have completed over 2.5 million tests provides the firm with a vast data set to train its algorithms on the interaction of the four primary hormones present throughout a menstrual cycle. The new company intends to develop a system that would enable users to link their symptoms, moods, sleep habits, and prescriptions to the hormones in their bodies.
Inito is also interested in expanding the scope of its commercial operations. The startup company’s software is currently only available on iOS, but Inito plans to create an Android version with the additional funding it has received. In addition, Inito is interested in investing in research and development for new goods.
“While fertility hormone testing is our first product, this funding raise will allow us to invest in R&D for new tests that cater to solving problems faced by both patients and practitioners,” Rai added. “These problems include infertility, miscarriage, and low birth weight.” We are developing point-of-care assays to monitor the health of pregnancies, ovarian reserves, and male fertility hormones. Our technique uses a mix of hardware, biotechnology, and machine learning to increase the accuracy, reliability, and density of test strips. This allows them to assess several parameters on a single testing platform.
With the completion of this round, Inito has now successfully raised a total of $15 million in investment. Y Combinator, former Nurx CEO Varsha Rao, and a dozen physicians and family offices were among the investors who provided the firm’s first funding of $9 million.
Regarding the long-term goals that the company has set for itself, the company thinks that every human being should have access to medical treatment and data on their own bodies.
“We want to bring a variety of tests for fertility and beyond onto a single device at home, empowering people with direct access to health information and fostering a better understanding of their bodies and health conditions,” Venkatesan added. “We look forward to the day when Inito will be present in all homes and be as commonplace as a thermometer,” said one of the company’s employees.
