• MedLife, a private medical services provider launched in Romania in the 90s, has acquired the majority stake in health tech startup SanoPass, which offers digital personalized medical and wellness services.
• The deal of an undisclosed amount is part of the veteran company’s growth plan to become the biggest medical, wellness, and sports player in the country.
• SanoPass co-founders will keep managing the project and aim to grow their team and services.
While MedLife is moving forward to provide a full health tech service to its users, SanoPass targets scaling its solution by connecting over 50K users with 1K clinics and 200 fitness gyms in Romania and Moldova so far.
The health startup, launched in 2019, offers subscriptions to medical services, consultations, investigations, medical analyses, dentistry, nutrition, psychology, physiotherapy, advanced imaging, as well as fitness, and aerobics. What’s more, the platform also joined the 24/7 telemedicine trend and has tapped into NFTs to promote their services.
“Sooner or later, all these subscriptions and services should become tax-deductible because they represent a key tool in maintaining the health of the population and in relieving the expenses of the public health system,” Dorin Preda, Director Executive at MedLife Group, gives us a glimpse of the future.
This news rolls after MedLife has been on an acquisition spree, investing in different types of businesses in the wellness sphere, like the Sweat Concept fitness gyms. The medical company has over 45 acquisitions in its portfolio and offered Cleverage VC its first exit with SanoPass.
Cleverage VC was founded in 2020 by Georgios Sofianos, Voicu Oprean, Wargha Enayati, Sergiu Negut, and Alexandru Popescu, to grow the health tech vertical in the CEE region. In their portfolio, there are companies such as XVision, Medic Chat, Oncochain, MedicAI, RepsMate, Synaptiq, MediNav, VoxiKids, and Ulpia.
The investor community has supported SanoPass with two funding rounds in the past two years. Alexandru Popescu, the Managing Partner at Cleverage VC, told The Recursive that the startup will go through an accelerated phase, while they are actively looking to offer health tech pioneers smart financial resources, and a European network to grow.
What is next for health and wellness in Romania
“Our ambitions related to international expansion remain and we are considering expansion, over time, at the European level. The med-tech side is the core pillar of SanoPass, and we will constantly continue to innovate, be present in the tech startup community, but also help integrate the latest ideas and technologies for the benefit of the patient and the condition for good,” Andrei Vasile, Managing Partner at SanoPass, reveals in the official announcement.
The two co-founders, Delia Iliasa and Andrei Vasile, will continue to lead the company. The target for the next months is the expansion of their team, and clients both B2B as well as B2C. In addition to this, they are also working on the integration of nutrition as a wellness service.
We have found other players democratizing access to digital health and wellness services, such as nutrition and fitness, in a market valued at €4T in 2020. Amongst them, there is Bulgarian Healee, offering a digital platform to connect health professionals with users, as well as Romanian Beesers, that simplifies medical home visits.
