MassMutual Ventures leads $7m round of Singapore-based medtech startup

See-Mode Technologies, a medtech startup based in Singapore and Australia, announced that it has raised US$7 million in a series A round led by MassMutual Ventures Southeast Asia.

Existing backers Blackbird Ventures, Cocoon Capital, Entrepreneur First, and SGInnovate as well as angel investors participated in the round.

See-Mode co-founders Milad Mohammadzadeh (left) and Sadaf Monajemi / Photo credit: See-Mode

According to the World Health Organization, 15 million people suffer stroke worldwide each year. Of that number, 5 million die and another 5 million are permanently disabled.

Founded in 2017, See-Mode applies AI and computational models on medical images to help clinicians obtain stroke risk factors that may not be accessible in current clinical practice, allowing doctors to decide on the optimal treatment for patients.

Its debut product, Augmented Vascular Analysis (AVA), is a medical AI software for automated analysis and reporting of vascular ultrasound scans. It uses deep learning, text recognition, and signal processing technologies to assist clinicians in interpreting and reporting vascular ultrasound studies. See-Mode claims that it could help reduce the time taken to generate a report from around 20 minutes to less than a minute.

AVA is commercially available in Singapore, with ongoing pilots in hospitals in Singapore and Australia. Meanwhile, the company says it’s adding more image interpretation and reporting capabilities to AVA and expanding the product’s capabilities to new clinical use cases.

Aside from AVA, the company has been building two other products. One is to detect vulnerable plaque using machine learning and the other is to identify high-risk blood flow using computational modeling.

What challenges has it faced recently? Since closing its seed round in 2018, the key concerns have focused on building and proving the core technology. See-Mode got regulatory approval for its first product six months ago, co-founder and director Milad Mohammadzadeh told Tech in Asia.

“As much as the seed round was about proving the core technology and getting to the point of regulatory approval, our series A is about expanding our product portfolio and building a repeatable and scalable sales process,” he adds.

What are its future plans? The company will use the new funds to support its commercial expansion to Europe and the US next year and to strengthen its existing operations, according to a statement.

It also aims to at least double its team size by hiring talent, expanding its research and development (R&D) and engineering capabilities as well as building up its core sales and business development team. At present, See-Mode has a staff of 15 people.

The startup is also broadening its partnerships to include research institutions across the globe to build a base of scientific evidence for its R&D efforts.

What is its funding history?