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Singapore startup StretchSkin develops wearable sensors for the healthcare and gaming industries

(L-R) StretchSkin co-founders Ariffin Kawaja and Mayank Rajput with Business Developer Izzat Ismail

Working for an NGO, Mayank Rajput would spend his weekends in care centres for the elderly in Singapore. This is when he realised that there was a lack of affordable healthcare facilities for the aged population in the island nation.

“This motivated me to begin my entrepreneurial journey,” he tells e27. “I met my co-founder Ariffin Kawaja while volunteering at one of the care centres. After sharing our thoughts with each other, we found a common ground and decided to start a business in affordable physical rehabilitation, bringing a fun element into it via active gaming using soft wearable sensors.”

After the initial discussions, the pair spent nearly four months for market validation with physiotherapists, sports rehab, fitness & wellness clinics and hospitals in countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, India, China and Australia.

This provided them a better perception about the major problems facing the rehabilitation sector.

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“We started StretchSkin Technologies in October 2018 with a vision to improve the lives of people in Southeast Asia with affordable digital healthcare,” he adds.

Incorporated in Singapore, StretchSkin develops affordable wearables for different use cases in healthcare, gaming and smart clothing. Its products can be deformed into curvilinear shape to enable functionalities that are hard to achieve by traditional electronic devices.

The products are designed on a hybrid combination of soft functional materials, compliant membranes, sensors and integrated functional chip components.

StretchSkin’s first product is Virtual Exercise Therapy System (VETS), which comes with data-driven personalised recommendation. It is under pilot testing at several elderly care centres in Singapore.

Currently, the enterprise version of VETS is priced at S$2,000 (US$1,500) per unit, or S$400 (US$300) per month for a SaaS model. The B2C version is available for S$1000 (US$750) per unit, or S$100 (US$75) per month for a single user for the home version.

“We have also made affordable data gloves for gaming and active rehab which are under internal evaluation,” Rajput shares.

Stretchable electronic sensors

The rehab gloves and body joints measurement wearables will be available separately, which can be used with the Android app and can be further integrated with VETS for advanced data-driven recommendations.

Use cases

Gaming: StretchSkin’s gaming wearables mimic the standard gaming consoles which are currently available in the market, but with a new experience. Players can control games by moving their fingers or through hand gestures. The wearables are comfortable and facilitates active gaming where players move their limbs to play the games.

Rehab: The rehab patch wearables provide the tools for healthcare providers to keep track of patients’ progress — be it in a clinical setting or at home. The rehab patch is self-adhesive and does not require ionic conducting gel to increase its sensitivity.

Limb flexibility of joints and muscles, rehab duration is some of the data points which is captured through the stretchable electronic sensors.

Smart clothing: StretchSkin’s sensors form the basis of the smart clothing which is used in various applications. The smart clothing captures the users’ movements which can be translated into readable data, for instance, to assess sports-related performances.

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It can be used by animators to capture an actor’s movement and translate it into a complete animation by combining with specific art work. The wearables are able to track individuals’ performance during physical activities such as walking, running, gym training, yoga among others.

Education: Its sensor technology can also be used by educators to illustrate science-related subjects, such as force, pressure, motion and temperature, in a creative way. Students could be immersed into specific subjects by using the sensors to experiment and understand real-time results.

The target markets

Initially, StretchSkin — which was incubated at IMDA-backed PIXEL — targets markets such as Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. In the long run, it wants to maintain a lead in the US, China, India, and the Middle East in the next five years with affordable and high-performance rehab, gaming, smart clothing, fitness & wellness products in the market.

“For the rehab software platform, rehab gloves and measurement sensors, the users are mainly from smart clothing manufacturers, sports therapy clinics, health coaches, rehab clinics, elderly care centres,” he says.

“For gaming gloves, its key users are gamers, Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality developers for the applications in healthcare and Industry 4.0,” he adds.

Over its two-plus years of existence, StretchSkin has raised US$37,000 from an angel investor, besides US$45,000 in grants from the government, incubator and other facilities, including from NTUitive Venture.

The startup is currently in talks for a bridge round of S$300,000 (US$225,000), which will help it in expanding team and the fabrication and certification of its products.

“After that, we will look for a pre-Series A round of US$2-2.5 million. We are currently talking with investors in the US and the Middle East for this round,” Rajput discloses.

In Rajput’s opinion, it is hard to start a venture in the hardware sector as one needs to take into account multiple stakeholders (customers, investors, etc.) at different levels to succeed.

“We need customers and capital to stabilise the business. So most of the times, it’s difficult to get what you desire. For a hardware startup, it’s always challenging to develop a minimal viable product while going through multiple iterations in it with the limited availability of resources,” he admits.

Image Credit: StretchSkin Technologies

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