A startup that aims to simplify and scale purchasing processes in the life sciences has secured a Series A round.
Today Labviva announced $20 million in new funding, bringing the company’s total capital raised since inception to $30 million.
The Boston startup’s new funding is led by Biospring Partners, a venture firm co-founded by Michelle Dipp and Jennifer Lum in 2020. Funding in this round also came from existing investors Senator Investment Group, B Capital Group and Glasswing Ventures.
Linking organizations and suppliers
The company is led by Siamak Baharloo, a trained geneticist who has worked at companies like Thermo Fisher Scientific and Merck Millipore. He told BostInno that his goal in his career has been to build applications that help scientists solve problems and gain access to the products and services they need to execute their experiments.
“This is my background, but Labviva is sort of an extension of that function. (We are) building a platform that is geared toward the user, the buyers, whether they’re a procurement team or they are scientists, and create a platform that specifically speaks to their needs and allows them to really level the playing field with the suppliers in their environment,” Baharloo said.
Labviva aims to serve larger B2B organizations, such as pharmaceutical companies and universities. These organizations acquire products from around 2,000 different manufacturers per year, Baharloo said.
“From a procurement perspective, being able to validate and onboard thousands of (product) catalogs into their purchasing system is a daunting task,” Baharloo said.
As a result, many of these organizations rely on just a few distributors to help them gain access to this large portfolio of products. Baharloo said this creates challenges in finding the best pricing and delivery preferences, as well as getting complete product information.
“There is a significant efficiency that they can gain if they can build a direct relationship with many of those suppliers, receive contract pricing and be able to have more visibility into their supply chain and ability to be able to identify alternative sources of products,” Baharloo said.
Labviva has built a platform that gives organizations easier access to supplier catalogs, which can help them secure discounted pricing and the product information needed by scientists and lab managers.
Baharloo said Labviva also helps suppliers with uploading and updating their catalogs much faster and enriches them with more product content. The company uses AI to categorize products across different catalogs.
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“In one of my previous employers, a major supplier in our space, I remember we had this floor of cubicles that was staffed by people and that’s what they did, day in and day out,” Baharloo said.
AI is also used to add context to products. The company’s technology reviews scientific journals and papers and identifies the products used and how they were applied.
Labviva also provides suppliers and manufacturers with data on purchases, in some cases down to the level of the scientist ordering the products and the protocol it was used in.
New capital, new growth
Baharloo said Labviva incorporated in 2019 and has since grown to about 40 employees. With this new funding, they aim to grow to about 70 people by the end of 2023. That means the startup will outgrow its North End office and begin the process of moving to a space around the corner on Causeway Street. He said this office is about five times larger than their current space.
Labviva has pharma companies and universities in the queue to gain access to their platform, Baharloo said, and needs to grow its team to serve this growing interest. The company also plans to invest in marketing efforts.
To support the company as it scales, Lum from Biospring Partners is going to join Labviva’s board of directors. Lum said Labviva is their second software investment and the second Boston-based company they’ve invested in.
“There still remains enormous opportunity for life sciences companies to really adopt and harness software platforms and products. The rate at which this sector has adopted software actually lags pretty far behind other leading sectors,” Lum said.
She said this is largely caused by the regulatory nature and specific workflows of life sciences companies.
“Because of that, we’re big believers that software needs to be tailor designed for the users and the needs of life sciences companies,” Lum said. “And that’s what Labviva has done a great job at.”
