Naxions Completes $15 Million Funding Round to Advance AI-Powered Digital Marketing Solutions for Life Sciences

An AI-based life sciences marketing solutions company, October 2019NaxionsAnnounced the completion of a new $15 million funding round, co-led by Volcanics Venture and China Creation Ventures (CCV). Following this round of financing,Naxions Co.,Ltd. will continue to invest in AI technology and product R&D, expand service value, enrich application scenarios, and upgrade and broaden its collaborations with doctors, patients, and pharmaceutical companies.

As a previous leader in life sciences marketing, Veeva, a U.S.-based provider of healthcare CRM systems, has grown into a company with a market capitalization exceeding $20 billion by effectively addressing sales representative management and work efficiency issues while seizing the opportunity to transition from traditional architecture to the cloud.

Among the two strategies of increasing revenue and cutting costs, Veeva falls into the latter category, achieving cost reduction by optimizing its cost structure and improving efficiency. However, as market competition intensifies, the need to boost revenue has become increasingly urgent. In response to this demand, next-generation high-tech marketing products will inevitably evolve in two directions: one is multi-scenario information flow matching based on seamless data integration and artificial intelligence, such as Salesforce’s Einstein AI platform; the other is the need to serve and connect more stages of the marketing process, rather than focusing solely on sales representatives.

In contrast, the Chinese healthcare market is witnessing a shortened product lifecycle, a sharp decline in product profits, and intensified industry competition due to the implementation of a series of policies, including tiered diagnosis and treatment, consistency evaluation, the "4+7" volume-based procurement program, the CFDA’s acceleration of new drug approval processes, and DRGs. Consequently, traditional offline pharmaceutical sales representatives are facing large-scale layoffs.Both upstream and downstream segments of the industry chain are in urgent need of transformation to achieve compliant, efficient, and precise marketing approaches that deliver genuine and effective results.

Naxions’ marketing product service system leverages advanced technologies and algorithms, including Natural Language Processing (NLP), big data analytics, and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), to integrate medical data from various regions. This creates a physician-centric medical knowledge graph encompassing pharmaceuticals, diagnosis and treatment, medical materials, and surgical procedures. The system helps healthcare enterprises achieve more efficient market coverage, facilitates more effective transmission of professional information between new drugs and key opinion leaders (KOLs), and enables primary care physicians to access the same specialized knowledge as core specialists with greater efficiency. By utilizing advanced technologies such as knowledge graphs, it more effectively addresses information asymmetry.

Previously, a drug strategy required three months of offline research and consulting to complete.Currently, based on Naxions’ data and technology, it can be completed within one week.Compared with traditional pharmaceutical sales representatives, who can reach a maximum of 70 physicians per month, the intelligent marketing product and service system provided by Naxions enables professional representatives to deliver specialized medical knowledge to over 1,000 physicians monthly, thereby significantly enhancing efficiency for clients.

In 2019, Naxions achieved efficient nationwide coverage for more than 60 pharmaceutical products, becoming the AI-driven marketing solutions provider with the largest number of pharmaceutical enterprise clients and the broadest physician reach. Leveraging its proprietary ONE DATA framework, data middle platform, and algorithms tailored for complex business scenarios, Naxions has developed a suite of high-tech products serving various marketing functions, including marketing, sales, medical affairs, and commerce.

The comprehensive product portfolio and accurate trend forecasting have been well reflected in business outcomes. Naxions currentlyFacilitated more effective connections between 20 leading pharmaceutical companies and 45,000 doctors across China, serving a drug market with a scale of RMB 600 million. The service received widespread acclaim from clients, achieving a 100% renewal rate in 2019, a 250% upsell rate per drug, and a 500% year-on-year growth rate in core business.

Ruan Wei, Founder and CEO of Naxions Co.,Ltd., stated that since its establishment, the company has been driven by the dual engines of “data + technology,” committed to reshaping the pharmaceutical value chain through advanced technologies and products. This approach aims to help enterprises generate revenue, assist physicians in improving treatment standards, and enhance the well-being of patients, thereby truly realizing the principle that technology serves business and creates social value.

Liu Kai, an investor at Volcanics Venture, statedIn recent years, the core of healthcare reform has been cost containment within medical insurance. The comprehensive implementation of volume-based procurement represents a major initiative in this round of healthcare reform and will have a significant impact on the industry, particularly in pharmaceutical marketing. By compressing profit margins for drugs through centralized procurement, medical insurance policies are compelling pharmaceutical companies to adopt more efficient marketing systems.

Naxions leverages technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence to enhance the efficiency of pharmaceutical marketing. Moreover, the team hasYears of Industry Experience, strong customer relationships, with established collaborations with most multinational pharmaceutical companies. The operational data from the past two years also corroborates industry trends and the team’s capabilities. We are highly optimistic about the Naxions team and will provide comprehensive support for its development.

Zhou Wei, Founding Managing Partner of China Creation Ventures, stated, in the face of the uneven distribution of medical service resources in China and the advent of an aging society, how to enable more people to access high-quality medical resources and pharmaceutical services has become a significant challenge. This is particularly true in the primary healthcare sector, which serves a vast population. China Creation Ventures aims to address this issue through its investments at the intersection of healthcare and technology, leveraging technological innovation and network effects to provide solutions.

As a product and technology company, Naxions has leveraged artificial intelligence and big data capabilities to systematically build an intelligent marketing product and service system tailored to the current state of healthcare in China. This system addresses industry efficiency issues, particularly by providing primary care physicians with access to advanced pharmaceutical information services comparable to those available at leading tertiary hospitals. We believe that Naxions’ platform can play a significant role in enhancing China’s healthcare service capabilities through advanced technology and network infrastructure.

Volcanics Venture, established in 2016, is dedicated to identifying, investing in, and serving high-growth-potential startups in the fields of Chinese internet innovation, pan-intelligent technologies, and new medical health. It provides sustained value-added services to grow alongside these companies. As a professional venture capital fund with a global perspective, it delivers superior returns to its investors.

The three partners, Zhang Suyang, Dong Yeshun, and Wu Ying, have worked closely for many years as partners in top-tier USD/RMB funds. They collectively possess over 60 years of investment and corporate management experience, along with deep industry resources. Their previous investment track record includes Ctrip, Tudou, Hanting, Home Inn, EachNet, Goodway, Andon Health, Kanghui Medical, Baosteel Packaging, Ping An Good Doctor, Shanghai Pharma Cloud Health, Ecovacs Robotics, Taibang Biological Group, and Best Express. To date, Volcanics Venture has invested in outstanding projects such as Geek+, Shebaotong, Gene+, Aimeng, Gogoboi, Jianke.com, Fourier Rehabilitation Robotics, Shanghai Cell Therapy Group, and Anjie IoT.

China Creation Ventures (CCV) is a new brand established by Wei Zhou, former Managing Partner of KPCB China, and his long-standing TMT team. After a decade of managing the Chinese fund for a top-tier global venture capital firm, the original team reunited to launch CCV, focusing on early-stage and growth-stage investments in the TMT and technology sectors.

The China Creation Ventures team has successfully managed four funds with a combined total size of $1.1 billion in both USD and RMB, setting a record of a 30% unicorn success rate among early-stage investments over the past decade. New companies valued at over $10 billion and additional unicorns have already emerged from its latest fund’s portfolio. Across its four funds, the firm has invested in three companies now valued at over $10 billion, two valued at over $5 billion, and three that have delivered returns exceeding 100x. Its early-stage discoveries and investments include JD.com, CreditEase, Rong360, Venustech, Yixia Technology, Tantan, Yachuang Group, JD Digits, Himalaya, Wancaiyilian, Perfect Corp., IceKredit, and Quicktron Robotics.