Leading health and fitness app developer Noom earlier this week announced that it had secured investment from several renowned venture capital firms. The company succeeded in locking down $2.6 million in investment from Europe’s largest mobile venture investment firm M8 Capital, Qualcomm Ventures and Harbor Pacific Capital, plus pre-series A funding from ex-executives at Korean game giant Nexon.
Noom’s flagship product, Noom Weight Loss Coach has been the number weight loss app on the Android platform since its launch and is now the top grossing app in the Health & Fitness category since the launch of version 3.0 in mid-September. Based on a person’s daily eating and exercise behaviors, the Coach gives members a customized program to help them lose weight, get fit, and stay on track. Noom is the first company to bring together three core concepts into one mobile weight loss application: tracking, motivation and coaching. Users have now lost a total of more than 19 million pounds with the Noom Weight Loss Coach.
With this funding round, Noom is expanding into Asia by opening the Noom Korea marketing office and launching Noom fully localized in Korean. Korea is the #3 international market for Noom already, behind only U.S. and UK. With UK-based m8, Noom is also forging ahead in building more relationships in Europe. “Noom is proven innovator and leader in mobile fitness,” said Joseph Kim, General Partner, m8 Capital. “The most powerful smartphone apps are those you use everyday, and Noom’s Weight Loss Coach is exactly that. We’re excited about Noom’s growth potential”.
Noom has over 15M installs across its various wellness product lines, while being exclusively available on the Android platform. “We are very happy to have gained a valuable partner in m8 Capital as well as additional support from existing partners. With this support we will continue to expand internationally as well as to other mobile platforms,” says Noom Co-CEO/Co-Founder, Saeju Jeong.
Qualcomm reaffirmed their commitment to Noom in this follow-on round: “We view Noom as a leader in the consumer wellness and analytics space with its “mobile-first” approach. Noom’s “Weight Loss Coach” app serves as the ideal beachhead to offer a broader suite of coaching tools – focused on less manual input and more insightful output.” said Investment Director Patrick Eggen.
CEO of Noom Saeju Jeong originally founded the company as WorkSmart Labs in the US with ex-Googler Artem Petakov. Find more about the company and Jeong’s story in this previous article.