Local tech startup Boundlss has ambitious plans to take its artificial intelligence health app to insurers across the globe, and is seeking to raise $4 million by February to help it achieve its goal.
Local tech startup Boundlss has ambitious plans to take its artificial intelligence health app to insurers across the globe, and is seeking to raise $4 million by February to help it achieve its goal.
Founded by chief executive Jonah Cacioppe and chief technology officer Mike Kruger in 2016, Boundlss previously raised $1.7 million, largely through investments by mining magnate Kerry Harmanis, to fuel developments and secure health insurers as clients.
Current board members are Mr Cacioppe, Mr Kruger (who developed the technology), and former Department of Health director general Neale Fong.
“We’re in the middle of a capital raise now,” Mr Cacioppe told Business News.
“We’re talking to quite a few reinsurers in the US and South-East Asia; we’re talking to a few insurers, and then we’re talking to VCs in east coast Australia, the US, the UK, and a couple in Singapore.”
The Boundlss app is sold on a monthly subscription basis (through a two to three-year contract) to health and life insurers, which direct the product to their customers as a tool to improve health and wellbeing.
Mr Cacioppe said it encouraged healthy behaviour using an AI health coach and a point-based rewards system.
He and Mr Kruger shared a passion for health, he said, and had worked together writing reports on startups for the government, before developing startup ideas of their own.
They initially developed wearable health technology for corporates, but potential clients lost interest after the mining boom ended, he said.
“We gave up on corporate wellness at the end of that year, and in 2016, with the bones of a product we built for corporates, we focused on insurance,” Mr Cacioppe said.
“After working with HBF (on wearable tech) we figured, actually, if you look at a health value chain, who’s got the most to gain from you being healthy?
“You, the government, because the government pays when you’re sick, not a GP because they make money when you’re sick, but insurers make money if you’re healthy and they lose money hand over fist if you’re sick.”
In early 2016, Boundlss secured a $50,000 grant from the state government, which allowed it to develop its product before signing AXA Hong Kong as its first client, the world’s second largest health insurer by member numbers.
Boundlss has also worked with Great Eastern Life (Singapore and Malaysia’s largest life insurer), HBF (Australia’s third largest health insurer), and home-care provider Silver Chain.
Mr Cacioppe said Boundlss had several significant deals to launch next year and expected to earn approximately $1 million in revenue, triple their earnings in 2016-17.
Boundlss would be looking to be profitable in the next five years, he said.
“We’re trying to build an autonomous health platform, so the kind of investment we need is large and substantive to complete the project,” Mr Cacioppe said.
“Technically we could probably break even within 18 months, but that would mean not being highly aggressive with developing our AI, and we will be highly aggressive for years.
“We think there are two races. One is an AI race to develop a health platform for insurers, even just in South-East Asia there’s a trillion (dollars) in premiums, so that’s a massive prize, and second is capturing the insurers.
“We’ll spend aggressively to do that as long as we have investors to back us.
“Then we’d either list or sell to one of these large insurers. AXA is the second biggest insurer in the world, its balance sheet is huge, so they’re likely acquirers.”
Mr Cacioppe said he had learned much of his business knowledge from his father, Ron Cacioppe, who was a businessman and academic.
“I learned a few things – focus on revenue, reduce costs and keep them lean, be nimble and fast, and that vision is important,” he said.
