This week we had the honor to interview again Athanase Kollias, CEO of KINVENT, a company that helps sports and rehab professionals assess progress and build engagement and motivation. Last week, Kinvent announced that it has raised $18M in new funding. This new funding is mainly based on a new minority shareholder, Nov Santé, managed by Eurazeo.
As a reminder, KINVENT, founded in 2017, is a leading player in the fields of physical rehabilitation and sports biomechanics producing innovative measuring and training devices for the facilitation of every day and athletic movements. The company currently has 75 employees and has raised $26M to date. Half is from VCs in France and Greece. The other half comes from business angels coming from sports and rehabilitation. Of note, Raphaël Varane, who is a defender on the French national soccer team, 2018 World Cup Champion, and current Manchester United player, is one of their investors. KINVENT is doing very well financially as it is tripling its revenues every year.
Picture: KINVENT & EURAZEO team
KINVENT offers an app, KINVENT PHYSIO, a range of 8 connected sensors measuring strength, balance and range of motion of athletes. KINVENT solution helps fasten teams’ rehab process, and assess athletes in one minute. What is also unique about the KINVENT PHYSIO app is that it can understands the baseline of each individuals and uses data from 200,000 patients globally to compare individual data against similar demographics.
Picture : KINVENT 8 sensors in 1 ecosystem
The display of the data recorded by the device sensors is transcribed by the KINVENT PHYSIO App, installed on any iOS or Android terminal. All sensors are capable to assess powerful muscular groups and record in real time, giving an instant biofeedback data on the app.
Picture: KINVENT products in action
Here are some pictures of the KINVENT mobile app and dashboard:
Picture: KINVENT mobile app and dashboard
Here is a video showcasing KINVENT products:
Their products are currently used globally by 14,000 coaches and physios, and 200,000 patients in more than 68 countries. KINVENT has also built the world’s biggest database in functional rehab with 3,000,000 assessments. Many major French national sports team and sports Federations are using their product today.
KINVENT products are also used by leading healthcare organizations and universities such as Mayo Clinic, HSS, Aspetar, Princeton University, just to name a few.
📝Show Notes: Through this interview with Athanase Kollias, we touched on the key milestones they achieved in 2023, their new $18M fun raise, and their plans for 2024 and beyond with the introduction of new products, sensors, and potential M&As in order to faster penetrate new markets.
Best Quotes: Here’s some of the key discussion points and best quotes from our conversation with Athanase:
On this new round of funding of $18M and the fact that the US market has become Kinvent’s second biggest market in terms of revenue:
“This round of funding is the third one for Kinvent. The first two rounds of funding were in 2019 and 2021. 2023 was a very big milestone for Kinvent. In fact, in 2023, all our business units were cashflow positive, including the U.S., which became our second biggest market. The US market captured 8% of our revenue”.
On their plan for the US Market to represent 40% of their total revenue by 2027:
“By 2027, we expect the U. S. market to represent around 40% of Kinvent’s total revenue, while maintaining our growth and doubling our revenues every year. So further penetrating the US market is a major goal for us. There are about 250,000 physical therapists and 400,000 coaches in the U.S. And all those are in need of data and biofeedback and engagement and motivation. So this is a big part of this fundraising”.
On the fact that they currently work with 10-15 US major teams and their upcoming partnership with Smartabase:
“We already work with about 10 to 15 major teams in the major leagues in the US. . This week we are also announcing a collaboration with Smartabase where we will be part of their ecosystem in order to centralize all the data into Smartabase. That's an important milestone for us into the major leagues in the U.S”.
On their plan to focus on Canada as well:
In 2024, our main objective is to focus on the United States and Canada. We are a medical device and we are also getting right now our medical certification for the Canadian market. So we are getting there as a medical product”.
On their plan to triple their R&D budget in order to invent new sensors, and artificial intelligence, and machine learning technologies:
“So this new round is very important for us because it will allow us the following objectives. First of all, we are going to triple our R&D budget, as we are now looking to invent new sensors to help sports and rehab professionals assess progress”.
“Until now, as you may have seen, we have had dynamometers, goniometers, and force plates. We've also just launched three months ago and EMG sensor called the K-Myo. Now we are looking into getting into power measurement and speed”.
“So in order to achieve this, we need to put some fuel in our R&D. And furthermore it goes through new technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence, meaning technologies that will allow us to give suggestions to take all this knowledge inside our ecosystem and our database and help professionals through this knowledge to adapt and build the best optimized program they can build for their athletes or patients”.
On the fact that they are also now looking into new types of sensors to measure training load, and other cardiovascular activities:
“Until now Kinvent was focused on biomechanics, the analysis of the human movement and how through this analysis, you can get data on strength, balance and motion. So the sensors helped us going into physiological signals and that's just the first step. But power, the training load, and other cardiovascular activities, all those things, are things that we are looking into now as well”.
On their plan to work with 5% of the global physical therapy community globally in the next 5 years:
“So today Kinvent works already with more than 14, 000 professionals around the world. And 80% of our activity is in Europe, 10% is in the Americas, and 10% of our activity is in Asia”.
“So out of those 14, 000 physios, about 25% of them are located in France. And today we work with 5% of physical therapists in France and our objective in the next four to five years is to work with 5% of the global physical therapy community globally, which is about 2 to 3 million physical therapists around the world, meaning physical therapists, trainers, coaches, strength and conditioning coaches, sports doctors, etc.”.
On their continuous plan to partner with strategic resellers:
“We are also strengthening our resellers network all over the globe. And to give you some examples, in countries like China, Japan, Korea, Oceania, Thailand, we're not planning to go there by ourselves. It wouldn't make sense. We really need partners that will give us feedback on our products as we are a medical product and we have a product that works in performance. So because of that we pick our partners very carefully”.
On the fact that they are looking into M&As and acquisitions in the future:
“We work with Eurasio, which is the biggest French fund, managing about 33 billion euros, so the idea behind it is that we won't stop there. Our objective is to put our hands into technologies that we haven't invented, but that others have invented”.
“So we plan to make strategic M&As and acquisitions. And we have already started aiming at some companies, especially companies that are technology driven as well as companies that are education driven. That will help us evangelizing the market and democratize those technologies. So this is where the fundraising will help as well”.
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🔥Upside Chat: Athanase Kollias, CEO of KINVENT, a Leading Sports and Rehab Professional Assessments Company, On their new $18M Fund Raise, Their Growth and M&A Plans For 2024 & Beyond