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There are currently 177 startups in the Munich startup ecosystem that can be assigned to the health sector. They have completed around 176 financing rounds over the past ten years, raising a total of €967.7 million in funding. The strongest year was 2021, which attracted €323 million, or around a third of all funds. The current year follows in second place, with Munich healthtech startups raising €183 million by the end of June. 2019 ranks third with €113 million. The total valuation of Munich healthtech startups is around €3.1 billion.
Startups can be roughly divided into four categories:
Biotechnology
This category includes startups that use, improve, or support biotechnological processes. These include startups such as Tubules, which develops so-called antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), Preomics, which works on automation and sample preparation technologies for so-called proteomic analyses, or Irubis, which is known for its novel sample carrier for ATR infrared spectroscopy.
A total of 51 Munich-based startups fall into this category, although multiple allocations are possible. They have raised approximately €665.1 million in 91 financing rounds since 2012. This gives the biotechnology sector a total valuation of approximately €1.1 billion.
Health Platform
The second category is the platforms, which include models such as Climedo, which focuses on electronic data collection for decentralized clinical studies, as well as the solution of Cliniserve, which is intended to simplify communication and process planning between patients and caregivers as well as between nursing staff in healthcare facilities. But also offers such as the Nui Care – the startup is working on a digital assistant that reactively answers all relevant questions for caregivers.
The Health Platforms category includes a total of 59 Munich-based startups. They have successfully completed 85 financing rounds over the past ten years, raising €542.9 million. These platform startups have a combined valuation of approximately €1.7 billion.
Medical Devices
The Medical Devices sector includes all startups that manufacture medical devices. Examples include Mecuris (Ortheses and prostheses), Reactive Robotics (automated early mobilization of severely affected patients) or Adjucor (implantable cardiac support device). But also companies that develop medical robots such as surgical assistance from Medineering or production techniques for medical devices such as Kumovis develop, fall into this category.
The 46 startups in the Medical Devices category have completed 76 financing rounds and raised a total of €410 million. The overall valuation of the category is €806 million.
Pharmaceutical
The last of the four categories in the health sector – Pharmaceutical – includes all startups that produce medicines or support pharmaceutical companies in doing so (apart from the production itself, which falls under biotechnology). Ysura For example, it is developing a digital meeting room for doctors and pharmaceutical sales representatives. However, the largest part of this area is made up of digital therapies, i.e., medical apps. They cover a wide range of health problems and are also reimbursable, provided they are approved as digital health applications (DiGA) by the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM). These include startups such as Kranus (erectile dysfunction), Vantis (cardiovascular diseases) and of course Kaia Health (lung disease COPD).
Currently, only 28 startups fall into this category – however, with increasing acceptance and use of DiGA, this sector is expected to experience significant growth in the future. The overall valuation of this sector at €798 million reflects the expected potential compared to the other three categories. With €318.9 million from 25 financing rounds, the pharmaceutical startups are also well-equipped financially.
More information about the healthtech scene
The three healthtech startups with the highest valuations are Kaia Health (273-409 million euros), Tubulis (240-360 million euros) and Avi Medical (200-300 million euros). Furthermore, 22 of the 177 startups have female founders on their founding team or were even founded exclusively by one or more women. Also interesting: Around half of the companies are less than five years old; the largest wave of new startups occurred in 2017, with 31 newly launched startups.
