Bionexo: BRL 16 billion in transactions and the ambition to be the Apple Store for healthcare

In 2021, BRL 16 billion were transacted on the Bionexo healthcare marketplace, a jump of 33%; focus now is to expand services, including acquisitions

The covid-19 pandemic has put the use of technology at the center of the debate for the health sector. And the technology company for the healthcare industry bionexus felt the change up close. Bionexo’s main solution is a hospital products marketplace that connects health institutions with providers. Only in 2021 were BRL 16 billion transacted in the marketplace, a 33% jump compared to 2020. The company’s revenue grew more than 27%, reaching R$ 115 million last year. “We had an inflection in the growth curve”, says the CEO, Rafael Barbosa.

The accelerated pace is due to three main factors, according to the executive. The first of these is the growing investment in technology. Bionexo invests around 30% of your annual software development revenue, focusing on improving existing products and offering new ones. “The result we see today is a maturation of the investments made in 2019 and 2020,” he says.

Another factor was the company’s effort to expand the products offered to existing customers. More than 50% of growth in 2021 comes from the company’s own customer base. “It was a strategy traced back there to generate new offers so that the customer hires more products with us”, he says. The third point is the timing of the sector, which is looking at the use of technology as a priority in order to gain efficiency.

Intelligence and Acquisitions

One of the company’s focuses now is to make a qualitative leap in the services offered. “For a long time, we digitized existing processes, and this brought transparency and efficiency to our customers. The next frontier is to ship more computational intelligence into our products,” he says. This means automating processes, simplifying work in healthcare facilities and generating more efficiency with less work.

The company continues to keep an eye on acquisition opportunities. In the last five years, Bionexo has invested in five companies. The most recent acquisitions were Clínica nas Nuvens, an office and clinic management platform, acquired in 2021, and Avatar Soluções, a revenue management company in hospitals, acquired in 2020.

After withdrawing from the IPO last year, Bionexo received investment of BRL 440 million of Bain Capital, which now owns 43% of the company. Of the R$ 300 million that remained in the company’s cash, half goes to acquisitions to be made within 24 months.

The focus of the acquisitions are products that complement Bionexo’s offer. The company that was born as a marketplace in the healthcare sector today already offers other services such as inventory planning and management, data analysis, product tracking and a second marketplace, focused on orthotics and prosthetics.

Health Apple Store

In the long term, with the inclusion of new services and products, the goal is to be a kind of Health Apple Store, a platform with several different functions that are based on a common infrastructure. Today it is already possible to make a single login and access more than one Bionexo tool.

An example of how this concept already appears in the business is its database, which accumulates information from all your products and offers insights to customers. “The intention is to have this background tooling, where the products work in a harmonious way”, he says.

Going forward, the goal is to open the platform to other players who want to plug in their solutions. “The customer can have not only a shopping marketplace, but also a solutions marketplace,” he says. “If today I solve a customer problem, in the future I want to solve ten, thirty problems”, he adds.

The model, however, should take at least five years to reach this stage, according to Barbosa. In addition to developing solutions, the company is concerned with the usability of the tools. The goal is to be at the level of applications designed for the final consumer, such as Uber and Instagram, which are more concerned with the user experience. “It’s not just a matter of money, there is a time for maturation”, he says. “We have been in the market for 22 years and in 22 years we will continue here. Our focus is to get things done right”, completes Barbosa.

Source: Exam