[Funding alert] Makers Hive raises $9M from Starfish Growth Partners, Investpad

Makers Hive, a Hyderabad-based startup that has developed and built a bionic arm, has raised $9 million from Starfish Growth Partners and Investpad. The freshly raised funding will be used for R&D, to scale production, and go to market strategy.

Set up in 2018, Makers Hive is focused on assistive-tech industry, especially prosthetics, to help differently-abled people. It has developed a mobile app-enabled bionic hand – KalArm, which is a 3D-printed, EMG sensors embedded lightweight device.

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On the funding received, Makers Hive CEO & Co-founder Pranav Vempati said,

“We came together with a collective vision to enhance the everyday lives of our fellow human beings who are disadvantaged by hand amputations. The access to assistive technology can be extremely tough for weaker economic sections of society and that remains our prime focus – to ensure global adoption without compromise in quality.”

According to the startup, the bionic arm is indigenously developed and has bagged the first batch of pre-orders of over 200 numbers. KalArm is focused on below elbow interventions and it is also currently working on above elbow solutions in the space. It is also building exoskeletons for defence and medical applications.

On the funding, Philip Thomas, Founding Partner and CEO, Starfish said,

“Makers Hive represents the ideal innovation startup that we at Starfish aim to nurture in the future as we focus on empowering game-changing ideas. There is a clear need for their technology across the world and holds the potential to change millions of lives.”

Starfish Growth Partners and Investpad have recently come together to create an idea-stage innovation fund of over $100 million to invest in idea-stage companies over the next three years. The endeavour is to support high potential business ideas. Their partnership creates a support ecosystem encompassing capital advisory, business incubation, and growth acceleration services.

“There are an estimated 40 million people across the world in need of prosthetic devices and India alone accounts for more than six million people…. Through the bionic arm and other medical devices under development, we are very confident that Makers Hive will play a leading role in bridging this market gap,” said Sai Abhishek Rayarao, CEO, Investpad.