By Pallav – Sublimely
Sydney Startup Rockmelon Raises $3 Million For Its Autism Support Platform
The Sydney based startup Rockmelon, which has created a mobile app to help children with autism has secured $3 million in funding from angel investors.
Founded by Alex André de la Porte, Nicole Rogerson and Stuart Waite, Rockmelon is a learning platform with an extensive library of skills – interactive learning modules, Flashpacks – visual tools to build language skills and team management capabilities to track therapy progress which ultimately help parents give their autistic children the right care.
It all started with Alex, the Executive Chairman of Rockmelon whose son Beau was on the autism spectrum. To help his son and thousands of other children suffering from developmental delays, he conceived the idea to create a learning platform for the parents to offer real-time insights into a child’s progress and support their ongoing development. He then brought in Nicole and Stuart to build a strong foundational team with complimentary skills.
Research shows that early behavioural intervention is one of the best treatments for children with autism. The recommended amount of therapy is a minimum of 20 hours per week, but the majority of children receive much less. Moreover, access to therapists and clinicians can be extremely costly and is often limited by location. Rockmelon is trying to solve all of these problems, with their ‘Parent Edition’ already out in the market and their ‘Learning Edition’ in development.
The three co-founders are very careful to ensure that the resources on the app are developed hand in hand with clinicians and industry experts to provide the most up to date content to their app users.
More interestingly, Rockmelon works on ‘Profit For Purpose’ business model which generally means that a significant part of the profits generated would be reinvested back to support the cause/purpose, in this case the global autism community.