Salu

🚨 Disclaimer

All research on startup and the whole investment memo has been done for personal use of Akim Arhipov.

Founder approached us with an exclusive offer for the fff.vc community to participate in the Bridge Round of Salu. As of today, his is not a public round and fff.vc community is the only one being offered to participate.

As Salu has now validated the it can operate in foreign markets (Finland, Spain, incl has initial traction there) from Estonian clinic and medical team, and confirmed its core operations are self sustainable (positive gross profit), it is a great momentum to grow traction, before going after the bigger round within 10 months.

Even though the situation is not ideal runway wise (2month), the rapid growth in subscriptions (mostly annual ones) with €34k+ MRR are showing that there seems to be product market fit putting us in the position to invest in the promising company on a similar valuation as the last convertible round (€4m) having set sight on the €1.5m round on a higher valuation within 2024 (€8m+).

After spending some time with founders, looking into the market and speaking with some of the users of Salu, we gathered enough confidence to participate and offer Salu to the community of the fff.vc.

Salu is offering the best alternative to a family doctors / local health centres. It’s like a personal doctor providing online & in-person medical care for a fixed monthly subscription fee. Online and in-person help is available 7 days a week. Medical help for your whole family. Anytime, anywhere.

Salu is basing the Value Proposition on three main pillars

3. Salu packages include the whole family - They want to ensure everyone gets the medical help they need so their health support automatically extends to your whole family.

Last year, company has managed to achieve

The business is also highly scalable within the EU countries as the medical license acquired and medical team based in Estonia allows them to offer services across the EU countries.

Expats in new country have trouble getting medical help

Salu is a licensed clinic with its own medical team, offering a wide range of online & offline medical services being focused on expats as the target group. Salu is addressing the online part of the service, having employed nurses and doctors, while offline part is being solved via partner clinics (SynLab, Mehiläinen, Terveystalo, Confido), that are collaborating with Salu.

Salu is currently live in three markets: Estonia, Finland and Spain and are generally covered by most insurance providers.

As things stand, the services Salu is offering as follows:

1. Online Medical Consultation - chat with medical expert
2. Sick Leave Management - Easily open and close sick leave from the comfort of your home
3. Prescribing Medication - Get prescribed medication online if medically suitable
4. Referrals to Specialists - Get a referral to a specialist online if medically suitable (specialist cost covered by public health insurance)
5. Doctor’s Appointment - Staff is available for in-person meetings if necessary (at Salu’s cost)
6. Lab tests and Analyses - Perform lab tests and analyses if medically necessary (at Salu’s cost)
7. Pre-Travel Medical Consultation - Expert advice, vaccinations, and health recommendations for a safe journey
8. Preventative Healthcare Solutions - Health analyses packages with expert feedback and reminders for your body’s needs
9. In Q2, Salu launches its comprehensive health coverage including primary & specialty care, hospitalisation and preventive care (similar to private health insurance). This way, Salu can be the primary health plan for both individuals & companies.

Operations

• Salu has an internal medical team (nurses & doctors) providing online medical care. Offline medical care is provided by Salu’s partner clinics. The cost of partner clinics is covered by Salu, however, their volume enables them to negotiate better terms. Whenever you need medical help, you start an online chat with Salu’s medical team. Salu’s medical team determines the right treatment, incl. which analyses, procedure, etc. is required → this enables Salu to keep costs under control & prevent misuse/fraud.
• Online medical care is provided via chat, ie asynchronous consultations. This means, one nurse/doctor can handle multiple patients simultaneously or ca 25 patients in an hour (vs 4 patients an hour by a traditional GP). This approach is vital for scalability.
• Out of ca 18k consultations made on Salu, 90% of all health issues have been resolved entirely online, significantly reducing the medical cost for resolving health issues.
• Salu has a medical team based in Estonia providing medical care across the EU on a cross-border basis (ie no local licenses or medical team required). This means, they have a cost arbitrage - MRR per user in Finland/Spain can be ca 60-70% higher than in Estonia, however, the online medical cost (90% of health issues) remains the same for all markets.
• As online care is provided via chat (text-based consultations), many of the consultations can be fully automated and resolved without nurse/doctor being involved in the process (e.g., closing sick leave, renewing prescriptions, etc.). This further enables scaling and brings down the operating cost.

The efficiency in using the existing resources is crucial. Salu makes sure that the cheaper labour (nurses) are tacking as many issues and communications as possible prior to scaling the user to more expensive labour (doctors).

To look at the available alternatives and their issues:

Go-to market / Marketing

Salu is entering the markets by targeting the expat communities via direct-to-consumer marketing. Expats are heavily influenced & dependent on information shared by other expats in closed communities. This creates a perfect platform for Referral / WoM marketing.

• Salu works with the group admins & activists to acquire customers through these channels.
• Currently the best converting channels are expat communities in social media (example: “Expats in Estonia”, with 22k members on FB), WoM/referral and SEO.
• 94% of customers are highly satisfied with our service, leaving us a maximum score - a strong indicator of sustainable, long-term organic growth via referrals.

B2B Approach

• In healthcare, payers and users of (healthcare) services are 2 different persons (an individual uses healthcare services, but employer/insurance pays for it). Selling to / partnering with various healthcare payers (mostly employers & insurances) are key to scalability on top of B2C growth.
• Salu plans to scale through B2B - a) private health insurances and b) employers & relocation sp’s. These B2B customers will pay for Salu services on behalf of their employees/insured individuals.

Existing B2B traction

• 4 employers covering in total ca 200 end-users, incl Yolo Group; Cariad Technologies, Volkswagen’s R&D center in Estonia. In Q2, Salu targets to start a pilot with Bolt
• 3 relocation service providers - Jobbatical, ReloEst, MoveMyTalent
• From insurance side, Salu recently started pilots with ERGO, If, Compensa to provide medical care services for individuals with private health insurance.
• Insurance companies currently carry a high medical cost as >90% of medical services used by insured people are provided in-person with no prior triage. Salu has proved 90% of health needs of its customers are solved online. Through pilots, Salu aims to prove it can significantly reduce insurance companies’ medical cost by solving their insured customers health needs mostly online (at fraction of the cost compared to private clinics with physical infrastructure). If the cost reduction is proven , insurances are highly motivated to send all their insured customers to Salu, ensuring strong scalability.

Subscription includes:

Key Metrics

MRR: 34.5k€ (32k Estonia / 2.5k Finland & Spain)

Customers: 1,575

Burn: 44k€

March estimated unit economics

Andreas Kotsjuba / Andres Kukk / Dr. Ingmar Lindstöm

Use of Funds (500k€)

Transaction: Primary round

Allocation: 500k€

Pre-money Valuation: 5m€ (Pre-Money)

Cap Table: founders & key team: 72%, existing investors: 28%

Minimum ticket: 10 000€ (first come first served)

Fees: 7% one off + 7% carried interest