Is Singapore medtech firm Biofourmis’ near-unicorn status warranted?

If all goes well, another tech startup could soon join Sea, Grab, Lazada, Razer, and Trax in the billion-dollar club. But unlike its affiliates that are dominating the fields of ecommerce, gaming, and fintech, Biofourmis uses AI to, among other things, personalize the treatment of medical patients and detect the onset of heart failure.

Any skepticism about Biofourmis’ quick rise is understandable. After all, Kuldeep Rajput, founder and CEO of the five-year-old company, had said that it was valued at only around US$500 million last November, predicting that it would hit “unicorn” status not until late 2023.

But just 10 months later, The Business Times put Biofourmis’ valuation at around US$800 million after its series C round. A spokesperson tells Tech in Asia that the firm, which was founded in Singapore but has moved its headquarters to Boston, is now a “near-unicorn.”

CEO Kuldeep Singh Rajput quit his PhD program in 2015 to found Biofourmis / Photo credit: Biofourmis

Like any private company, Biofourmis keeps its financial figures a secret. That said, Rajput told The Business Times that its revenue in the first half of 2020 was already 10x more than what it had made the whole of 2019. It’s also EBITDA-profitable, he said.

The growth was largely due to new partnerships with seven pharma companies, including Novartis and AstraZeneca, as well as with nonprofit medical group Mayo Clinic and 10 health systems.

Meanwhile, a source close to the startup tells Tech in Asia that “ultimately, the valuation of Biofourmis is in line with other digital health unicorns globally, such as Livongo, iRhythm, and Veeva.”

All three are publicly listed in the US, but Livongo and iRhythm are the most similar to Biofourmis in that they too tap big data to monitor the health of patients. This similarity allows us to estimate Biofourmis’ numbers:

What’s noteworthy is that both Livongo and iRhythm are high-margin businesses, which bodes well for Biofourmis. They’re still losing money, but that is ostensibly because they’re in rapid expansion mode.

What exactly does Biofourmis do?

The key technology behind Bioformis is Biovitals. It uses algorithms to ingest data from a patient’s health history and FDA-approved wearable sensors to measure a person’s overall health.

Biovitals can detect changes in someone’s health days earlier than traditional screenings can, Rajput told VentureBeat, giving doctors an early heads-up when an intervention is necessary.

It can also determine the timing and dosage of a patient’s next medication and send reminders through a companion smartphone app. The company calls this a “digital pill” – a prescription that evolves in real time based on the patient’s data.

An unexpected boost

Keeping up with growth