LOS ANGELES & LONDON– Vamstar, the leading AI-enabled global sourcing and procurement platform for medical supplies and pharmaceuticals, today announced the close of its $9.5 million Series A funding round. Alpha Intelligence Capital (AIC) and Dutch Founders Fund (DFF) led the round, which also included existing investors btov Partners and Antler.
Vamstar will use this investment to accelerate market and product development plans, deploying Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance its consumables and generics exchange platform, improving data quality for faster e-commerce, and digitizing procurement and sourcing processes for both buyers and suppliers across the industry.
The healthcare industry lacks an organized procurement system that integrates data, processes, people, and technology across the supply chain. Despite advances in other industries, hospital procurement processes have not integrated digitally with suppliers’ commercial processes, leading to supply chain inefficiencies. Not only is there a need to realize the benefits of digitizing sourcing and procurement processes to reduce transaction costs, but to improve the data foundation to drive value-based healthcare.
Vamstar was founded in 2019 by industry veterans Praful Mehta, Richard Freeman, Ph.D., and Vishesh Duggar to tackle the problem at the root of sourcing and procurement transformation failures: data integrity and user engagement. Vamstar combines best-in-class functionality for streamlining healthcare sourcing and procurement processes by using Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing to connect billions of data points across the supply chain network, provide real-time market intelligence, and enable digital commerce through a common e-procurement platform. Vamstar, in collaboration with the University of Sheffield and the University of Nottingham, have won Innovate U.K. funding for several high-profile projects including post-COVID recovery to help monitor supply chain risk, and supply-demand matching by creating the largest healthcare supply chain network.
“We see a tremendous opportunity in a market that is largely underserved for the Vamstar platform to organize the procurement system in the healthcare industry,” said Terry Chou, Partner at Alpha Intelligence Capital “The Company’s advanced Natural Language Processing capability sets them apart from other offerings. Paired with the strategic vision of the founders Praful, Richard, and Vishesh, Vamstar is setting the standard for procurement-enablement in healthcare.”
“Healthcare supply chains are under tremendous pressure with ongoing crises like COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, and rising inflation,” said Vamstar founder and CEO Praful Mehta. “There is very little data available to help healthcare procurement managers and suppliers make decisions in real-time. At Vamstar, our goal is to empower supply chain professionals, clinicians, hospital administrators and their suppliers to collaborate in innovative ways to create meaningful relationships. It is only by enabling a shared vision for collaboration, fueled by better data and insights, that we can deliver greater value for all stakeholders and the wider community within the healthcare ecosystem.”
Vamstar connects both buyers and suppliers electronically to automate transaction and process flow across the supply chain on a global scale. The platform is used by businesses and organizations connecting suppliers, such as pharmaceuticals, consumables, medical devices, and digital technology companies, with public and private buyers, such as hospitals, laboratories, health insurances, clinics, corporations, universities or Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs).
Buyers can use Machine Learning to search across suppliers and their catalogs; launch tenders and sourcing events using automated workflows; receive bids and quotes in a prioritized sequence; and place orders electronically and automate the source-to-pay (S2P) processes. Suppliers on the other hand can get prioritized access to tenders, RFXs, and direct orders from 86,000 hospitals and clinics across 100+ countries directly or within their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platforms; get access to Machine Learning (ML) forecasts and Natural Language Processing (NLP) enriched catalog and tender award data with virtual supplier profiles, and receive orders electronically and automate the order-to-cash (O2C) processes.
