Finland-based H2 Wellbeing, maker of employee wellness platform HeiaHeia, raised just over $2 million (1.5 million euros) in a round led by Finland’s Wallstreet Financial Services. Additional backers included unnamed angels and a Finnish funding agency called Tekes.
Until now, H2 has run on its own revenues, which the company started generating just two months into its launch, and government grants. CEO and co-founder Jussi Raisanen told MobiHealthNews the company was waiting until it had a scalable business model before seeking funding.
Up until 2010 the company initially offered a direct to consumer version of its platform, but following substantial interest from employers it switched to a btob model.
HeiaHeia, which is derived from a Scandinavian sporting chant, offers employers a wellness platform with an emphasis on social interaction and gaming. The platform also offers companion apps on iOS, Android, and Microsoft devices.
"Our approach is sort of gamified self, not quantified self," Raisanen said. "So we want to bring this casual wellness approach. You can think of something like flight simulators that require serious attention for learning the ropes of the game and then you can look at something like Angry Birds, which you can pick up immediately. So it's casual gaming versus serious gaming. We're bringing that same thinking into health and wellness. You need to have a slightly less serious approach to health in order to get people engaged."
While HeiaHeia attracts larger companies, including PepsiCo, Santander, and Toshiba, the company's main customer base is made up of companies with between 100 and 500 employees. Currently HeiaHeia has close to 200 customers. Notably, one mid-sized company that uses HeiaHeia is Rovo, maker of Angry Birds. HeiaHeia's customer base mainly comes from northern Europe, the United States, and the UK.
HeiaHeia is hesitant to integrate wearable devices, but may eventually add some integration their more advanced users.
"The way we develop our product is we look at what our customers need and want and then that basically spurs our development," Raisanen said. "Wearables have been something of a question mark when it comes to corporate wellness [in Europe]. I know that they have been used at some companies -- but the results and the impact -- we are still looking at how they are used in a corporate context."
From end user surveys that HeiaHeia has sent out so far, when it comes to exercise, 70 percent of employees increased their activity levels after using the platform.
In the future, HeiaHeia wants to focus on changing workplace wellness by turning an individual's workday into a less "passive" experience. Raisanen believes encouraging employees to move during the work day might seem like a trivial problem, but is in fact a serious one.
"That's one area we feel employers have a great opportunity to influence things, so I would like to compare it to other areas where employers have been able to motivate change with things like removing smoking from offices," Raisanen said. "That's something that immediately impacts health. So when we look at what our product will be doing in the future, we're going to be helping companies achieve changes like this."
