Brazil-based healthtech Klivo announced on Tuesday that it has raised BRL 45 million in a Series A round led by Valor Capital Group. Also participating are other investors such as Civilization Ventures, Tau Ventures and Reaction, in addition to Brazilian funds Canary and Norte Ventures and angel investors that participated in Klivo’s $2.5 million Seed round in 2020.
André Sá (former partner at BTG Pactual and Stone) and Marcelo Toledo (former partner at Nubank), founded Klivo in the second quarter of 2019 intending to solve health cost problems for chronic patients (with recurring diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, respiratory diseases, for example).
According to Sá, in the United States, a chronic patient represents 70% of the total healthcare cost in the market. In Brazil, the cost is 80%, says the executive.
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“That patient is continuous. There are long-term diseases and the health system is all designed for an acute event. This patient who should be followed up in a much more longitudinal path ends up being followed up sporadically.”
Klivo proposes to treat these chronic patients with devices and data for continuous follow-up. The startup has a team of 71 health professionals such as physicians, nurses, nutritionists, psychologists, and physical educators.
Today, there are more than 21,000 patients in the startup‘s portfolio, who arrive through companies that offer Klivo as a corporate benefit, such as Ambev, or health plans that are clients of the health tech, such as Unimed, Porto Seguro, and Prevent Senior, and pharmaceutical companies.
“For diabetics, we use a glucometer, which is an equipment that measures blood glucose. We receive the information online in the cloud and we understand how the patient’s health condition is”, Sá explains, in an interview with LABS.
Sá says that the startup also helps the patient in medication adherence, that is, in the purchase of medication and with educational content. The company has achieved a 51% increase in medication adherence of these patients, with an overall cost reduction of up to 65%.
Improving the quality of life for patients with continuous care
“We want to deliver a quality of life improvement, engage the patient with an improvement in clinical indicators. An engaged patient improves clinically and spends less on healthcare.”
Through its app, Klivo can see the day of the week and the time of day the patient is most active to personalize care. “The pandemic brought this issue of digitization of the patient journey. I think we will have some Nubanks within the health sector in the next ten years”, says Sá.
According to the executive, just as the 2018 Subprime crisis created opportunities for newcomers in the financial sector, the pandemic also “disrupted” the market, providing an opportunity for new players.
With the new investment, the startup intends to make acquisitions, invest in a scale, and expand lines of care. The business itself, according to Sá, has an “attractive” gross margin on each customer transaction, which is profitable. However, the startup still consumes cash because it invests in a product, which includes a clinical team for protocol development and a technology team.
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The executive recalls that Brazil has 52% of the adult population with at least one chronic condition, that is, around 80 million people. Only 24% of the population has access to the private health sector in Brazil. “We are small compared to the potential that exists but we imagine tripling in size next year.”
