Kortex Ventures, from Fleury, Sabin and Bradesco Seguros, bets on “sleep medicine” startup

Co-founder of Auteq, Tácito de Almeida wasted no time when the technology company for controlling agricultural machinery was sold to the American giant John Deere, at the end of 2014. Without sleeping on the spot, he soon chose the target of his next venture: sleep medicine.

The project attracted Geraldo Lorenzi Filho, director of Incor’s sleep laboratory, and Talita Salles, a professional with more than ten years of experience in the area, particularly at Philips. And, after four years of gestation, in 2019, Biologix officially arrived on the market.

Now, healthtech is being reinforced by three other big names in the sector, through an investment of R$6 million led by Kortex Ventures, a corporate venture capital fund that has the Fleury, Sabin and Bradesco Seguros groups as investors.

The round also includes the participation of Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, which was already investing in the operation. Until then, Biologix had raised around R$6 million, R$3 million of which through funding programs from the São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (FAPESP).

“The synergies with these three investors are very great”, says Tácito de Almeida, co-founder and CEO of Biologix, to NeoFeed. “We want to democratize access to sleep apnea diagnosis and the funding will open doors for us to scale our model.”

Part of a R$260 million vehicle, the check is the tenth signed by Kortex Ventures. The fund has already allocated around half of this amount and plans to close these investments with a range of 15 to 18 assets, reserving part of the resources for follow ons.

Head of investments at Kortex Ventures, Gustavo Cavenaghi mentions that the time dedicated to development and the complementarity of the founders’ profiles were some of the points that sparked interest in Biologix.

“Biologix has already proven itself and left that valley of death in which startups are still taking technological and product market fit”, says Cavenaghi. “The company is already taking off. So, it is a well-established capital. We are putting gas in the tank so they can stretch the growth curve.”

From theory to practice, Biologix’s democratization discourse seeks to consolidate a more accessible and scalable alternative to polysomnography exams, which assess sleep quality and identify possible complications associated with poor nights’ sleep.

Unlike the traditional method, which requires the patient to travel to the location and sleep wrapped in wires, the healthtech exam can be carried out at home. Simply plug the high-resolution oximeter developed by the startup onto your finger at bedtime.

The exam is activated by the patient, in an application, and the device monitors issues such as snoring, movement, saturation and heart rate. Once the process is complete, the data is processed in the cloud and the result is generated in a matter of minutes.

To arrive at this equation in the reports, which also have the signature of a specialist doctor and the support of artificial intelligence, Biologix developed and validated algorithms in more than 300 tests simultaneously with conventional polysomnography.

“Research estimates that around 40 million Brazilians have sleep apnea, with 90% not even diagnosed,” says Talita Salles, co-founder of Biologix. “The bottleneck has always been diagnosis, because the traditional test is expensive and only available in a few large centers.”

She notes that, while the price of traditional equipment varies from R$10,000 to R$120,000, the value of the Biologix device is R$800. Conventional exams cost between R$1,500 and R$4 thousand, compared to a range of R$300 to R$600 in the startup format.

The model adopted by healthtech to go to market is B2B2C. Today, around 4,200 doctors and clinics pay a monthly subscription, on average, of R$300 to access the devices and the platform.

Charges for exams from patients are made by professionals and practices, without the participation of Biologix and no revenue sharing with the startup, which accounts for an average of 10 thousand procedures per month and earned R$7.8 million in 2023, an annual jump of 53%.

B2B and international expansion

To start scaling these numbers, part of the round’s resources will be allocated to expanding investments in marketing and the startup’s team – from 22 to 50 professionals by the end of the year –, in addition to product development and a new oximeter.

The largest portion will be divided, however, into two fronts. The first is the development of the B2B model, with offers to hospitals, laboratories and health plan operators, a strategy that dialogues directly with new investors in their captable.

“We fit in easily to expand Fleury and Sabin’s offerings,” says Almeida. “And, in the case of Bradesco Saúde, we can have an open channel to standardize the values ​​and procedures for reimbursement for exams.”

The second focus is international expansion. With specific initiatives, today, the startup already has devices in countries such as Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Egypt. “This is a global problem, which is not restricted to Brazil”, says Geraldo Lorenzi Filho, co-founder of Biologix. “Our barrier now is bureaucracy.”

To deal with bureaucratic issues in each country, the startup already has advanced negotiations with local partners to take on procedures such as the registration and distribution of devices, a common model in the healthcare market.

“The idea is to start advancing this model in Latin American countries, such as Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay”, says Salles. “But, depending on developments, we do not rule out entering into direct operations in some of these markets.”