Excited to announce our investment alongside Global Founders Capital, Softbank, Maya Capital, Canary, 10K Ventures and Grão in the oversubscribed $10M series A of Nilo Saúde which is building an integrated relationship management and care delivery solution. The idea is to increase patients’ access and engagement via various channels, help with care delivery, and provide a collaboration platform. Tau Ventures is an AI-first fund in Silicon Valley investing primarily in seed and we occasionally take later bets when we see immense promise. We are investing in US / Canada but in exceptional cases will consider a deal outside, case in point Brazil which is a market we know very well. Nilo was founded in 2019 in São Paulo and impressed us with (1) a strong need, (2) building an execution-focused team, and (3) creating a differentiated product.
1) The Need
Brazil has 210M people, making it the (6th largest population in the world and 2nd largest in the Western Hemisphere. It also spends 10% of its GDP in healthcare, which is in line with a middle-income country. It also boasts of the largest single-payor system in the world covering all Brazilians. But there are vast disparities in healthcare access and expenditure. And in the last 5 years the country also saw the steepest drop in GDP in a century and the second highest death rate globally from covid, which has strained both its public and private healthcare. All of these are catalysts for payors and providers to leapfrog their old systems and adopt a modern, cloud-based solution offered by Nilo.
2) The Team
CEO Victor Marcondes has started two healthcare companies, been a consultant at Boox for 3 years and went to HBS. COO Isadora Kimura was a senior PM at digital health startup BetterUp and went to GSB. CTO Rodrigo Grossi was CTO at Bionexo, a large healthtech in Brazil, and holds a BS, MS and PhD from ITA (top technical institute in Brazil, equivalent to MIT).
3) The Product
We found Nilo’s product to be well designed, so are not surprised it has a 92 NPS (over 70 is considered high). The devil is in the details and we are counting on happy customers sticking to the product i.e., user satisfaction will help defensibility. And you can actually go beyond the US in terms of building an intuitive product. For instance, in Brazil the equivalent of HIPAA doesn’t impede Nilo from building on top of WhatsApp — used by almost everyone with a cell phone, which is almost everyone.
We are honored and excited to be part of Nilo Saúde’s journey, using technology to solve a big problem. More at https://www.nilosaude.com.br.
Originally published on “Data Driven Investor,” am happy to syndicate on other platforms. I am the Managing Partner and Cofounder of Tau Ventures with 20 years in Silicon Valley across corporates, own startup, and VC funds. These are purposely short articles focused on practical insights (I call it gl;dr — good length; did read). Many of my writings are at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amgarg/detail/recent-activity/posts and I would be stoked if they get people interested enough in a topic to explore in further depth. If this article had useful insights for you comment away and/or give a like on the article and on the Tau Ventures’ LinkedIn page, with due thanks for supporting our work. All opinions expressed here are my own.
