Latest Venture Funding Deepens Independa’s Ties with LG Electronics

commercial HD televisions for hotel and hospitality companies that operate retirement facilities that provide continuing care, assisted living, and skilled nursing services for the elderly. Independa’s deal with LG means that all commercial TVs that LG provides to a hospitality customer would come embedded with Independa’s Web-based social-engagement platform, dubbed “Angela.”

Once activated, Independa’s software-as-a-service would run behind conventional TV programming. It would display reminders for elderly viewers to take their medications and alert them if a relative or caregiver wants to chat by video or instant messaging. Independa’s system also enables elderly customers to use Facebook, Skype, online calendars, e-mail, and other online social services, with no computer skills required.

“We’ve brought cloud-computing technology into the standard TV,” Saneii says. “It turns the TV with our application on it into a touch-screen computer. What we’ve done with LG Electronics has changed the game for the elderly.”

In today’s statement, Nandhu Nandhakumar, a senior vice president with LG Electronics, says, “As we continue our collaboration to integrate the Independa platform in our market-leading commercial TVs, we are forming a stronger alliance by making strategic investments in the company. Our investment in Independa is in line with our belief that Angela is an ideal complement to our Pro:Centric platform for delivering services that can have a direct, quality-of-life impact on seniors and provide peace of mind to their loved ones, while also making the jobs of their professional caregivers easier and more effective.”

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.