Ouraring, the developer of the world’s first wellness ring and app ŌURA, announced that it has completed a $2.3 million seed funding round. Over 70% of the investments comes from the US investors and the rest from the UK, Switzerland and Finland. The seed round was lead by Lifeline Ventures. The total amount includes $0,5M R&D loan from Tekes, Finnish Funding Agency for innovation.

“In addition to financing, I am extremely happy to have all these internationally acknowledged investors in our team. They bring on-board their wide experience in multiple fields of business, financing and research as well as extensive personal networks. The seed round was actually completed already before we started our Kickstarter campaign in August. Also from the financing perspective we wanted to be sure that we can deliver what we promise in the campaign.”, says Petteri Lahtela, CEO & Co-Founder of Ouraring.

The ŌURA Kickstarter campaign ended on September 24th and over 2300 backers helped the company raise over $650 000 in 37 days. Half of the pre-orders came from the USA and Canada. Total amount of pre-ordered rings was over 2700 and the orders were received from over 50 countries.

“With Kickstarter campaign we wanted to test how people like the form factor in the context of the benefits it provides and how well the product “sells” itself. With seed and and Kickstarter campaign funding we are finalizing the ring firmware and app development, ramping up the volume production of the first 5000 rings and building up US market entry, among others”  Petteri Lahtela explains.

The ŌURA ring and app have been already used and tested for a few months by several independent user groups as well as some of the ŌURA investors and advisors in the USA.

“The feedback from the early users of ŌURA as well as the support we’ve gotten from our Kickstarter backers has been wonderful and really motivating. It helps us fine-tune the product and the overall user experience”, Petteri Lahtela says.

Ouraring will begin delivering the first rings for Kickstarter backers at the end of November as planned. The company recently opened its custom designed web shop where ŌURA can be ordered at a special price until the end of November. ŌURA will also be available in yet unannounced retail channel in the USA already in December.

“We have already now seen that as people discover the benefits and ease of use of ŌURA, new user groups are emerging. In addition to selling directly to selected consumer groups we are seeing a lot of interest from certain B2B segments where ŌURA can offer very unique benefits helping people to ensure their performance and ability to keep up with the high requirements of their profession.” says Petteri Lahtela.