Seed30 November 2020

Habitual secures £325k in seed funding led by Seedcamp to support its public launch.

Seedcamp led the financing round to help fund the digital health startup's public rollout.

£325KSeed

Habitual provides digital programs designed to help patients reverse prediabetes and type 2 diabetes through nutritional strategies and digital therapeutics. The company aims to enable individuals to live medication-free and achieve long-term disease remission.

Habitual has raised £325k in a seed round led by Seedcamp, with participation from MMC Ventures, bringing its total funding to £575k. The capital will support the company as it prepares for a public launch in 2021. Founded in September 2019 by Ian Braithwaite and Napala Pratini, the startup offers a digital programme designed to tackle type 2 diabetes using total diet replacement and personalised habit changes.

The latest financing follows an earlier angel investment round of £250k backed by individuals including Roger Hassan and Stephen Bourke. Habitual developed its three-part intervention in collaboration with specialists from Harvard, Cambridge, and Stanford universities. The company aims to address a growing healthcare challenge in the UK, where millions are affected by the condition.

From the founder

"While working as a doctor, I saw firsthand the devastating complications of type 2 diabetes – from strokes to heart attacks to blindness. For the majority of patients, pills are not solving the problem. We now have strong clinical evidence that remission can be the goal for most patients. Sadly, with the NHS at a breaking point, it is not in a place to deliver intensive remission programs to the 4.2 million type 2 diabetics in the UK."

Ian Braithwaite

cofounder & CEO at Habitual

Investor perspective

"Empowering patients to take their health into their own hands is the holy grail of medicine, particularly when it comes to diseases like type 2 diabetes. We backed the Habitual team because we believe in their vision of not just preventing, but also reversing, chronic disease by putting patients at the centre of the healthcare ecosystem. With experience in medicine, research, and start-ups, the founding team is ideally placed to be a key part of transforming the future of healthcare."