Healthcare
See the 14-slide presentation an AI-powered startup used to raise $25 million to upend pharmaceutical marketing
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- Drug commercialization is a labor-intensive and expensive process.
- An AI-powered startup called Odaia is looking to change that by providing real-time data analysis.
- The company said it raised $25 million from investors to scale its platform.
While artificial intelligence has started to change the way we discover and develop drugs, there’s one key part of the pharmaceutical pipeline that’s remained largely untouched by big tech advances: marketing.
That’s according to Philip Poulidis, a cofounder and the CEO of an AI-powered startup called Odaia. Odaia said on Monday that it had raised a $25 million Series B round led by Threshold Ventures and Monograph Capital. Wittington Ventures, Flint Capital, and other investors also participated in the round.
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Founded in 2018, Odaia helps pharmaceutical sales and marketing teams plan their strategies and product launches through a tool that offers data analysis and market forecasts. Pharmaceutical companies use the platform to better target their drugs to the healthcare providers who prescribe the treatments to patients, simplifying what’s typically an expensive and labor-intensive process.
“AI has been applied towards improving drug discovery, improving clinical trials, but not many advancements have been applied to the commercialization process,” Poulidis said in an interview.
Even as drugs are developed faster, he added, if those therapies aren’t available to patients at the right time through their healthcare providers, that becomes a bottleneck in the healthcare system.
Poulidis told Insider that Odaia’s clients included some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. As of February, the company said, it managed 13 therapeutic products on its platform.
Odaia removed financial details from the pitch deck it used to raise its Series B round before sharing the presentation with Insider.
Odaia was founded in 2018 with the goal of simplifying the way the pharmaceutical industry markets and commercializes drugs.
Odaia
The company is focused on improving interactions between pharmaceutical companies and healthcare providers, Poulidis said.
Odaia
In its first 18 months of operations, Odaia brought 13 therapeutic brands onto its platform.
Odaia
The company’s C-suite hails from sectors like computer science, healthcare, software-as-a-service, and product design.
Odaia
The US pharmaceutical industry spends tens of billions of dollars each year on marketing — the vast majority of which is geared toward reaching physicians.
Odaia
Odaia says that while pharma-company commercial teams connect with healthcare providers in a largely manual and lengthy process, its platform simplifies that work.
Odaia
To commercialize drugs, pharmaceutical sales teams need to analyze data, figure out where their target patients are, and focus on the right physicians.
Odaia
Odaia’s platform can automate the process to give commercial teams better and faster insights to plan their strategies.
Odaia
Maptual is Odaia’s main platform.
Odaia
It offers pharmaceutical sales teams information like market forecasts, the prescribing behavior of physicians, and anonymized patient-level data that can help companies understand how to form their sales strategies.
Odaia
While Maptual Field is geared toward helping the sales force, Maptual Sphere is focused on providing management teams big-picture insights on the market.
Odaia
The company said that its platform helped pharmaceutical companies in the various stages of the drug-commercialization process.
Odaia
Odaia says a major pharmaceutical company used its platform to shift the focus of its sales team in just two days, while an outside consulting firm took months to accomplish the same task.
Odaia
Poulidis told Insider that with its new round of funding, Odaia planned to expand its team and develop new features for its platform.
Odaia