The track that finances more than 10 billion yuan a year has sprung up many to VC projects

Make no mistake, medical robots are to B, not to VC.

Wen 丨 Zhang Xue

Wen 丨 Zhang Lijuan

Source 丨Tou China Network

Not long ago, we saw a set of data, this set of data shows that in the case of such a cold investment and financing environment, medical robots bucked the trend, in the first quarter of this year, the official announcement of 14 financing, more than 100 million yuan financing 4 cases, its total financing is the highest.

This is a continuation of last year's investment and financing trend, in the past year, from the perspective of a market segment of surgical robots alone, according to public incomplete data statistics, the domestic surgical robot industry has a total of more than 30 financings, of which Sharp Technology, Jingfeng Medical, Changmu Valley and other enterprises have completed 2 rounds of financing in one year, and Lancet Robot has completed 3 rounds of financing in a year.

But when it comes to the sudden rise in investment sentiment in the robot track in 2021, one investor directly pointed out that this is the concept of mutual speculation. "Last year's wave of fighting was very strong, but the thrust generated by capital has not yet been fully revealed, and for projects underwater, it will take longer to run out."

When asked whether they have recently been exposed to new projects, many investors have given a negative answer, in addition to the reasons we know that the shot is becoming more and more cautious, there is also a common reason, that is, there is nothing new in the field of medical robotics.

But the interesting thing is that the more senior investors in this field have completed the layout of each subdivision track as early as the last wave of capital. Investment institutions that did not pay much attention to robots before but are deeply involved in medical care have recently begun to lay out in the field of medical robots.

This track, which belongs exclusively to medical robots, is gradually becoming more interesting.

The financing fever is only the appearance

Among the companies announcing financing this year are Fourier Intelligent Robot, which set a new record for segmentation, and a number of early projects that have risen, such as Qingyue Technology, which has moved from disinfection to automation.

Of the medical robotics companies we came into contact with this time, only a handful of entrepreneurs revealed that they continued to raise money in the first quarter and were able to raise money.

Guokejia and partner Ding Runqiang said that in fact, from the macro level, for medical robots, it is not simply to pay attention to the continuous multidisciplinary interdisciplinary technological innovation, as well as the characteristics of the medical industry itself, but also to pay attention to policy changes, from medical service processes, adaptations, charging models and reimbursement ratios, which have an impact on the promotion of medical robots.

But we have also recently seen that in addition to the above reasons, the overall market environment is not optimistic.

Ding Runqiang also believes that the pace of investment since the beginning of 2022 has actually slowed down, especially the continuous adjustment of the secondary market and the spread of falling sentiment that began at the end of last year have been clearly transmitted to the primary market.

It is understood that the recurrence of the epidemic has made most of the hospital and the government's expenditure invested in epidemic prevention, so a large number of hospital procurement has been shelved, as early as 2020, the medical robots that were originally sent to the hospital were rejected due to financial problems.

This is not the worst, the product can at least find customers again. There are also some medical robot companies' products, which are still in the clinical trial stage before commercialization, and similarly, due to the impact of the epidemic, the clinical trial period has been indefinitely postponed.

Why? Medical robotics is a new type of cross-cutting research field integrating medicine, mechanics, materials science, computer vision, mathematical analysis and many other disciplines. According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) classification, medical robots can be divided into four categories: surgical robots, rehabilitation robots, auxiliary robots and medical service robots.

Public information also shows that in the mainland medical robot market, the largest proportion is rehabilitation robots up to 47%, followed by auxiliary robots, accounting for 23%, surgical robots and medical service robots account for 17% and 13% respectively.

Therefore, medical robots are very special, with dual attributes, first of all, medical robots are very fine, naturally have the characteristics of medical devices, such as surgical robots or robots related to diagnosis and treatment, their medical device components will be heavier, there will be consumables. Second, medical robots have the characteristics of service robots, which also represent components that actively replace people or actively improve efficiency.

This capital boom is not the first time in the field of medical robotics. CVSorce investment data shows that between 2017 and 2018, there was a financing boom in the field of medical robots, and reached a new high in the calendar year.

However, compared with 2021 to 2022, the transaction amount has increased significantly, but the number of transactions has not increased, which shows that the single transaction volume continues to rise. Specifically, in 2021, the number of financing events for domestic medical robots reached 58, and the financing amount exceeded 10.39 billion yuan.

Some observers also told me that due to the compound nature of medical robots, it not only attracts investors who traditionally look at medical devices, but also attracts the attention of investors who do TMT investment and even look at consumption, so more and more investors have joined this track, and the total amount of capital plates is also larger.

However, different opinions have also spoken from time to time, "The financing news released now has been settled half a year ago, and the real situation is not so positive." If you can feel it in Shanghai, the whole air is different, march and April, basically all the investors are lying flat. An entrepreneur in the field of medical robotics said so.

Down, shrink, enter

Due to the re-outbreak of the epidemic this year, some analysts said that the entire medical industry, except for some test reagents industry can grow, the rest are shrinking, compared with last year has shown a clear downward trend, the industry is expected to have signs of recovery as soon as next year.

"This year, we have not only lowered our revenue targets, sales targets, and even all aspects of spending, but also began to reduce our expenses and prepared for the winter, and the impact of the epidemic on the supply chain is too great." An executive at a medical robotics company who did not want to be named said.

However, just as there are different voices in financing, Qinglang, which has been working in the field of commercial service robots for many years, has begun to officially enter the subdivision of medical robots.

The person in charge of Qinglang's medical robot business said that this is not blind expansion, "mobile" is the main line of business expansion, and the expansion of the medical industry belongs to the trend under the main line of "mobile". At first, there will be some concerns, such as whether the medical industry from catering to medical industry will not be satisfied, but in the end, it turns out that the core mobile technology of medical delivery robots is relatively simple for Qinglang, and the hospital environment is not complicated.

Most fundamentally, "about 46% of the budget of domestic hospitals is spent on logistics-related places, for example, all the drugs for infusion in hospital beds are now transported by nurses, and the frequency is about 15 minutes to push drugs, and this transportation activity is completely responsible for robots." ”

On the contrary, practitioners pointed out that if you take a single medical robot as the entry point to start a business, the threshold is already very high now, at least ten times more difficult than seven or eight years ago.

So what about the role of capital? Gu Jie, CEO of Fourier Intelligence, believes that the help of capital to enterprises does not need to be repeated, and if there is no capital, the development of Fourier Intelligence will be at least three years slower than now.

But he also pointed out that the medical robot track is a race that requires patience, and investors should not overestimate the changes that companies have produced in one or two years, but also do not underestimate the changes in five years and ten years.

This also means that although the medical robot track will not be like consumer robots, it will achieve a sharp increase in performance in the short term after obtaining investment. But in the long run, even if it only doubles every year, it has the ability to become a leader in the field of segmentation.

In this exchange with medical robot practitioners, we also clearly felt that some entrepreneurs are disgusted with speculators or investors and projects that are chasing the wind. Some practitioners even pointed out directly that with the resurgence of enthusiasm for medical robots in the capital market, there have been many to VC projects on the market, and some have even obtained good financing.

What investors are looking at

The reason is that even if the current medical robot industry is in a trough, it is still a stable track for investors, but now it is more testing of investors' choice and research ability.

At the end of last year, Fu Zhilong, managing director of Yunxiu Capital, said: "In the field of robotics, if early enterprises want to obtain capital support, product differentiation should be very obvious, and we must highlight the ability to differentiate your scenes and products to investors. If a company in the late stage of growth wants to get the support of capitalists, it must first stabilize the market share of the scene in which it resides, and then develop the second and third scenarios, and I think it is best not to exceed three scenarios. ”

Today, these views are being fulfilled in reality.

Take the early project Qingyue Technology, for example, a company that makes disinfection robots, and the direction is air and water disinfection and purification treatment. The founder Chen Zhihua, a doctor of chemistry at Stanford University in the United States, told us that unlike other robot companies that are moving from automation to disinfection, Qingyue Technology is from disinfection to automation, and in the first two rounds of financing, the company did not have a product that was really put on the market, but fortunately, the technology is stable, and the differentiation in the market is more obvious.

In addition, Qingyue Technology is also one of the few companies that are still raising funds, according to Chen Zhihua, the company's A round of financing is underway. For the commercialization problem that investors were more worried about before, there is also a new progress, the 500 machines that have just come off the line have been robbed in an instant, and this year's revenue is expected to be 50 million, or even break 100 million, an increase of more than a hundred times over last year.

Regarding the second point, The entry of Qinglang Robot into the field of medical robots is also a good evidence.

In fact, no matter what field, from the perspective of investors, he needs to clearly predict whether this category of startups is likely to become a "golden oil". So what indicators do investors pay the most attention to medical robot startups now?

Ding Runqiang told us that the first is the team's engineering ability, the robot itself is a multidisciplinary integrated system integration product oriented to the application, for the entrepreneurial team, although it is not demanding "eighteen martial arts proficiency", but the system design and engineering, especially the ability to quickly engineering prototypes, is not only critical, but also often scarce.

The second is to see whether the product can be market-oriented commercial landing, for the field of medical robots, whether it is a service type or a diagnosis and treatment type, it is necessary to have accurate and clear product positioning, and to form a closed loop of customers (doctors and patients) and business.

We also learned that if medical robotics companies can do global markets, it is also a clear plus.

From the perspective of entrepreneurs, Gu Jie believes that compared with the past, the focus of investors has undergone some subtle changes recently: "Two or three years ago, few investors would pay attention to sales and revenue. But recently, more than 90% of investors will care about the ability to land and realize business, and pay attention to the company's real scale income. ”

According to observation, most of the institutions are still based on a wait-and-see attitude, but this situation will not last long, in fact, everyone has money in hand, but they are still looking for high-quality projects, more optimistic practitioners believe that in the second half of this year, the capital market will definitely recover some, and the head enterprises on the project will be more favored.

This optimism is mainly driven by the market. Compared with other fields, the medical robot industry is still in the track of rapid growth, whether it is rehabilitation robots or surgical robots, China's strong demand has emerged, it is foreseeable that in the next three to five years, the continuous driving force of this high-speed growth is still there.

After this new round of reshuffle, several major robot segments, including medical robots, will have a more obvious Matthew effect. Therefore, some investors and entrepreneurs believe that in the next one to two years, reshuffles, mergers and acquisitions and IPOs can all occur.

However, an investor who has long been concerned about the field of medical robots has given a different view: "Logically, there should be some mergers and acquisitions in the domestic medical robot market, but after so many years, in the field of medical robots, mergers and acquisitions are still not a climate." ”

He further explained that the reasons for this phenomenon are two aspects, one is that due to the influence of relevant policies, there will be pricing problems of the acquisition target; second, due to the segmentation of the medical robot industry, how the merger and acquisition parties can produce chemical reactions and achieve synergy is also more difficult.