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Labviva raises $20 million in Series A funding round
Labviva, a digital marketplace for life science supplies, recently announced that it has successfully closed a $20 million Series A funding round, CEO Siamak Baharloo told Axios exclusively. This funding round was led by Biospring Partners and also included participation from the insiders Senator Investment Group, B Capital Group and Glasswing Ventures, bringing Labviva’s total funding to $30 million.
The significance of this funding round lies in the fact that the life science supply sector is opaque and highly manual, which can result in delays in the delivery of chemicals and devices that are critical for pharmaceutical and medical research.
- Biospring managing partner Jennifer Lum will join Labviva’s board of directors as part of this funding round
- The funds raised will go towards expanding Labviva’s presence in Europe and Asia, hiring more employees, and developing more predictive analytics tools as part of its product offerings
- Baharloo stated that the funding provides about two-and-a-half years of runway and a Series B funding round may be collected as early as March 2024
How Labviva Works
Labviva, headquartered in Boston, connects researchers with suppliers of devices, reagents, and chemicals in an effort to simplify and hasten the research process. The platform is powered by AI and integrates directly with procurement systems from companies like SAP Ariba, Jaggaer, Oracle Procurement Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics 356, and Coupa, offering tracking and reporting tools. Some of its prominent customers are pharmaceutical giants Regeneron and Takeda, startups such as Bluebird Bio, and academic institutions such as Johns Hopkins and the University of California, San Diego.
Labviva’s Edge Over Potential Competitors
According to Baharloo and Lum, Labviva’s comprehensiveness and market expertise give the company an edge over potential rivals and existing tech giants such as Amazon and Google, who appear to not be leaders in the sector due to the complex workflows and vast amounts of data that life science companies must manage. Software, therefore, needs to be tailor-designed in order to work effectively in this sector.
Challenges Faced by Labviva
However, as Labviva expands, it is going to run into challenges, including hiring quickly and deepening its offerings without losing sight of its core strengths. Baharloo notes that Labviva has tapped into a relatively green field, and that the company must remain focused and avoid diluting itself.
Competition from other Digital Life Science Supply Marketplaces
While Labviva is not the only player in the digital life science supply space, few players have received significant venture interest in recent times. For example, Zageno, a life science e-commerce company, raised $60 million in a funding round led by General Catalyst in 2023. Science Exchange, another online marketplace for life science research supplies, raised $28 million in Series C capital in 2019, while Quartzy, a marketplace and lab inventory management system operator, raised $17 million in Series B funds in 2016.
Flashback: Founder’s Background and Inspiration for Starting Labviva
Baharloo, who has a background in molecular biology, led e-business strategy at biotech powerhouses Merck and Thermo Fisher before starting Labviva with an eye on helping scientists solve problems with bioinformatics tools. He explains that numerous experiments fail because the researchers did not use the right reagents or optimize their protocol based on the reagents, highlighting the importance of a platform like Labviva that can speed up the procurement and delivery process of critical chemicals and devices used in research.
