Wellness app maker Noom has secured an additional $2.9 million, bringing their latest round to $7 million. The round was led by New York-based RRE Ventures with participation from TransLink Capital, Recruit Strategic Partners, Scrum Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures and Harbor Pacific Capital.
Both Qualcomm Ventures and Harbor Pacific Capital have contributed to a previous round of funding for Noom. The company's total known funding to date is $9.6 million.
Noom was founded in 2007 as WorkSmart Labs, but changed its name in 2011 to match its flagship product, which is a food logging app available on Android and iOS devices. Noom Weight offers users a virtual coach, which assigns the user educational articles and challenges associated with his or her daily schedule.
The two other apps, Noom Walk and Noom Cardio, are Android-only apps. Noom Walk is meant to be especially battery-friendly compared to other activity tracking apps because it does not use the GPS constantly, and instead leverages the mobile device’s accelerometer.
Noom plans to use the funds to invest in its coaching feature cofounder Artem Petakov told MobiHealthNews. The company will also use the funds to expand the product, engineering and design teams.
"We think there's two ways of looking at it, one is that if you give people real health outcomes they will stay engaged," Petakov said. "That's fundamentally what we believe. And there's a lot of subtlety there but that's fundamental and, secondly, they will be come true fans for life because we actually changed their life."
Petakov wants to keep a strong following on the guidance and motivational features of the app.
In September 2013, Noom also invested in their engagement strategy by hiring Eli Holder, the founder of data visualization company Notch.me.
"[Eli has] been really instrumental in bringing a more organized process to studying users," Petakov said. "We've been passionate about getting to know our users, and Eli has really quantified that and also has added structure to the process so we've been seeing a lot of good progress."
Petakov also teased that the company has more features in the works to improve user engagement, but he plans to launch them only when they're completely ready. He says that Noom's main priority is still their flagship app, Noom Weight Loss Coach and will continue to be that for the foreseeable future.
"We don't do exact product roadmaps because we think that it's important to keep our options open and make sure that we deliver things in organized way," Petakov said. "So we don't like to over promise, we like to under promise and then over deliver."
In the past year, the company saw 20 million worldwide installs across the its suite of apps. The company is launched in the United States, Germany, and Japan. The most popular app is their flagship product and the company's second most popular app is Noom Walk.