Tivita, a Brazilian fintech company focused on financial management for clinics and physician practices, is preparing new services for the sector, including digital accounts, as it eyed Colombia and Mexico as expansion markets in Latin America, co-founder and CEO Claudio Franco told BNamericas.
All this comes after the company closed a $6 million seed round of funding last month, just a year after it was founded. The investment was led by FinTech Collective Fund, with participation from K50 Ventures, MAYA Capital and SSV.
“We believe Tivita has the ability to revolutionize financial management in healthcare across Latin America. This marks the fund’s largest investment in Brazil since inception,” Carlos Alonso Tauras, a partner at Fintech Collective, said in the release.
Since the product was released in January, the company has gained 120 customers across 16 Brazilian states. Tivita offers its solution in two contract models: a fixed monthly subscription for medical teams and a flexible postpaid model for offices that see up to 100 patients per month.
Franco and his partner Amilton Paglia both have unicorn track records: Franco was the former CMO of Gympass/Wellhub, and Paglia was CPO at Orist.
In this interview, Franco talks about his plans for the fintech.
BNamericas: How was Tivita structured?
Franco: I have two children, and having children means you have a very close relationship with the medical sector: you deliver them, you have to take them to the doctor, the emergency room, the pharmacy, etc. And this closeness made me very curious to understand why the medical sector, one of the most important sectors of any economy, is so behind in terms of technology in Brazil.
I worked with gyms at Gympass and with schools at Isaac, a fintech for private schools. These areas were much more advanced. Last year, I decided to research some papers, all of them in the health space.
We experimented with a few ideas before landing on the Tivita proposition, and when we got there, we looked for the most complementary person. We didn’t want to do it alone, so we found a partner and teamed up with Amilton, who has experience in technology, product design, and product building.
BNamericas: So what is your thesis?
Franco: We spoke to medical professionals who have recently graduated, who are just opening their first office, who are already established, who are entrepreneurs and run multiple clinics, or who are partners with multiple companies in their area.
And the first thing we noticed was that, regardless of the size of the healthcare institution, even those that had the best management systems available in Brazil, their cash management was done in Excel.
They were managing all of their schedules and clinical records in that software, and then everything else — how much each specialist was making, how much they needed to pay their suppliers and partner physicians, if they needed credits, etc. — was all done in Excel, and sometimes on paper.
Most of the software available in Brazil today is built on the principle of being a tool to help people working in clinics, but the second generation of software, which we already had experience with and learned, is teaching software to do the work of humans, which didn’t exist in the healthcare sector.
The third thing we discovered was that the concept of embedded finance, integrating financial products into software, didn’t exist in the healthcare space.
We’ve put all this together.
BNamericas: How is the platform structured?
Franco: Our first focus was automating manual tasks in clinics. For example, when you visit a doctor and pay for the appointment via PIX, [instant payment service]we automatically capture this payment, process it, generate an invoice and send it to you via WhatsApp, eliminating the need for interaction with the clinic’s secretary or finance person.
So the first flow we taught the software was accounts receivable. We’re not yet processing clinic payments related to health insurance, but that’s our next goal. This latest funding round was secured in part to address this need.
BNamericas: How did your discussions with the fund go?
Franco: I already had good relationships with some funds. They would often ask me if I was planning to start another business and to let me know if I did, because they wanted to be involved. We were in contact with funds that could help us at different stages. We reported our progress at the beginning of this quarter and they were amazed at our growth. Some funds even reached out to our clients to gauge their satisfaction and even reached out to potential clients that we had not yet served. All this sparked interest in investing.
BNamericas: You said the bulk of the funds will go towards processing health insurance payments, but what else will it do?
Franco: We build an entire infrastructure to process health insurance payments. Additionally, we manage payments to doctors within the same clinic. Currently, our largest client has 13 doctors working in one unit, and every month they manually calculate the payment for each doctor’s services.
Another key area is scheduling. Scheduling is the first touchpoint with the patient and a key data collection point. Without automation, there’s a lot of operational work to bill the patient later. So we’re looking to automate this process to make billing easier. Our three major investments by the end of the year will be focused on scheduling, physician payments, and health insurance billing.
BNamericas: Are you competing with more established ERPs in the healthcare space, because those don’t handle the administrative part?
Franco: I see the market split into three segments: The enterprise market is aimed at hospitals and healthcare providers, and is dominated by Tasy. [owned by Philips]Large companies such as , MV and Pixeon cover most of the hospitals in Brazil. This market demands significant investments, integration and data security with projects customized for each client. This is not our area of expertise.
The middle market includes mid-sized clinics served by iClinic, Feegow, and Amigo, which recently closed a large funding round with Riverwood. Then there’s the long tail market: smaller clinics and solo practitioners who are very price-sensitive and often don’t even have secretaries.
We target the mid-market and the long tail and have a huge following among self-employed professionals, experiencing strong growth in the mid-market segment.
BNamericas: You mentioned schedule management, are you looking to go beyond financial management to ERP in healthcare?
Franco: Yes, but with two big differences. First, we are not a productivity tool. Everything we launch helps our clients automate manual tasks. Second, we integrate with financial systems. For example, we will launch a digital account and integrate our payment system with our financial system so that customers can make and receive payments directly through that account.
BNamericas: When do you plan on starting this?
Franco: Digital accounts are planned for 2025. There is still a lot of work to be done, so this is not a priority at the moment.
BNamericas: Are you interested in expanding into Latin America? Are there any discussions currently underway?
Franco: We are exploring markets similar to Brazil that have less advanced payment systems. Mexico is our second largest and most important market in Latin America with a similar complementary healthcare system, but less advanced payment methods. We are monitoring the evolution of regulations in Mexico and the decline in cash use.
Another promising market is Colombia. Although healthtech is less developed than Brazil, the young population is driving rapid adoption of payment methods and technology. There are opportunities in both markets and we aim to lead in finance and healthcare automation technology in Latin America.
Additionally, Fintech Collective, which led our funding round, is also investing significantly in Colombia and Mexico.
One of them was Simetrik, a great Colombian company. The company is already big in the US and has raised a lot of funding from Goldman Sachs. It was Carlos who discovered the company in Colombia. When you have a fund that understands fintech and the region well, this synergy is very positive.
