Tech Roundup: Pandemic spurs boom in health tech investments

You’re reading The Brazilian Report’s weekly tech roundup, a digest of the most important news on technology and innovation in Brazil. This week’s topics: Brazilian health techs thrive amid pandemic, local restaurants plan to foster competition in deliveries, and the startup that wants to foster Latin America’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. 

Pandemic spurs boom in health tech investments

Brazilian startups have largely braved the economic storm created by the Covid-19 pandemic, but one sector in particular has thrived: health techs. A new report by think tank Distrito brings astonishing data: between January and October, health techs raised USD 93 million in investments — almost 50 percent more than in all of 2019.

• When it comes to the number of investments, 2020 could break last year’s record (45). So far, 42 operations have been confirmed — with two months still to go.
• In October alone, four investment operations raised USD 25 million.

Health techs’ profile. Brazil currently has 577 health techs, most of them created between 2015 and 2018. The lack of newcomers is accredited to the sheer complexity of the sector.

• The main areas of specialization are management and electronic medical records (25%), information access (17%), marketplaces (13%), and telemedicine (11%).
• Forty-three percent of firms are headquartered in the state of São Paulo, the country’s biggest tech and corporate hub.

Brazilian restaurants want their own delivery platform

While delivery services gave bars and restaurants a lifeline during the pandemic, the sector is wary of its total dependence on app companies, due to their fees of up to 27 percent and history of anti-competitive practices. In an attempt to boost competition,...