Female Led AI-Based Startup PROSPERiA Raises Seed Investment

AI-based startup PROSPERiA raised US$2 million in seed investment to expand the reach of its diagnostic solutions to the rest of Mexico. Initially launched in 2021, PROSPERiA’s solutions to detect chronic diseases in emerging markets have already been used to evaluate 10,000 patients, detecting over 4,500 potential pathologies.

“What we want to do with this investment is to boost the growth that we have had in recent months and reach our goal for 2022, which is to see 10,000 patients per month throughout the country and not just in Mexico City,” Cristina Campero, CEO, PROSPERiA, told MBN. The investment came from the Cardo Health fund, based in Sweden, with which PROSPERIA “shares the mission of improving the health and quality of life of people in emerging countries through improving access to healthcare by the use of technology.”

Cardo Health’s experience and the network PROSPERiA is entering will allow the company to develop new solutions, she added. The company is already developing a comprehensive health platform to provide better patient care and democratize access to quality health services in a timely manner through the use of technology.

Before finding Cardo Health, PROSPERiA went through a long and complex process due to the difficulties of operating a technology startup in Latin America, said Campero. “Although Latin America has seen a boom in investment in recent years, 74 percent of this investment has been focused on four sectors: fintech, proptech, logistics, and e-commerce. Investment in healthcare represents less than 7 percent of all the investment Latin America has received in recent years, lagging behind the sector a little,” Campero explained.

The complexity of investment attraction for healthtech companies in Latin America is caused by several factors, she said. For example, their business models are usually more complex and pose greater risks; they are often transactional B2B models with fewer international success stories. Moreover, in Mexico and Latin America, regulation for this type of companies is still ambiguous, creating uncertainty and increasing risk.

Mexico’s health-reactive culture also contributes to the difficulties. While this culture started to shift during the pandemic, Campero explained that the region still lacks a preventive health culture. “This means that the engagement of patients and people with these technologies, which favor early or even preventive diagnosis, is still a bit behind.”

This news is also a reason to celebrate women in leadership positions, considering that in 2020 less than 14 percent of the funding in Latin America was to female-founded or co-founded startups. “It is obviously a very exciting stage for us and even more so for me because I am in a very privileged position as the CEO of the company. I feel completely honored to have the opportunity to serve as a reference and an example for other women considering joining the start-up ecosystem. My journey has not been simple, but it is possible and every time we must support and push much more to be able to increase the participation of women in these positions and in these processes,” Campero said.