Independa, the San Diego startup developing Web-based services for the elderly, says today it has closed its Series A financing at $5 million. In a telephone interview this afternoon, Independa CEO Kian Saneii says the round is more of a round-up that includes all of the company’s prior equity funding, the conversion of $2.35 million in debt to preferred stock, and more recent venture investments.
Independa did not provide details on the amount of its latest venture investments, which came primarily from existing investor City Hill Ventures, the boutique San Diego firm created by former Halozyme Therapeutics CEO Jonathan Lim, and LG Electronics USA, a strategic partner that has been integrating Independa’s cloud-based technology in its commercial flat-panel TVs under an agreement disclosed a year ago. Other undisclosed investors also participated.
Saneii says the funding will be used to grow Independa’s customer base through an expansion of its network of distributors and channel partners, as well as increasing investments in R&D, sales, and marketing.
Independa’s evolving alliance with LG Electronics could prove to be the most significant development for the company that Saneii founded in April 2009. Last month, Independa’s software-as-a-service also was named as the most innovative new product in the software category for 2012 by Connect, the regional nonprofit for entrepreneurship and technology innovation. In June, Independa said it was integrating its software with Qualcomm Life’s 2net Platform to make its elderly health monitoring services more broadly available.
Yet Saneii describes Independa’s alliance with LG as “a huge deal” for the company, saying, “the disruptive technology that we’re bringing to the market, together with LG, doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world.” LG was included in the $2.35 million convertible debt financing that Independa disclosed in April (and was converted to stock under today’s announcement), “and they’ve stepped up with an additional investment,” Saneii says. “We’re very tightly integrated with them now from a technology perspective, from a sales perspectyive, and from a distribution perspective.”
Saneii says LG is one of the largest providers of