Kalderos Secures $28 Million in Series B Funding to Disrupt Business as Usual in the U.S. Healthcare System

With investments from Bain Capital Ventures and Mercato Partners, Kalderos progresses its purpose-driven pursuit to ensure drug discount programs benefit patients

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Kalderos

Jun 15, 2020, 10:01 ET

CHICAGO, June 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Kalderos, creator of the country's first and only drug discount management solution, announced today that it has secured $28 million in Series B funding to expand its capabilities to solidify its point-of-sale solution, expand to directly support patient and other discount types, and explore other financial exchanges in healthcare which would benefit from dedicated infrastructure.

The $28 million in funding came from Bain Capital Ventures and Mercato Partners. Mercato also funded Kalderos' Series A round in May 2019.

"In the short year since we closed our Series A funding round, we quadrupled our team, expanded our current drug discount management solution to cover additional programs and completed beta testing of the first dedicated IT infrastructure for proactive, preventative drug discount management. Already, our legacy solution has identified more than $100 million in noncompliant drug discounts," said Jeremy Docken, CEO and co-founder, Kalderos. "With this additional funding, we're forging ahead in our mission to be the drug discount management pioneer and, ultimately, create additional infrastructure to further streamline the interactions between participants in the healthcare ecosystem. We're excited to partner with Bain Capital Ventures in Kalderos' next life cycle and we're grateful for the continued support from Mercato Partners."

With the additional funding, Kalderos will focus on three key areas:

Platform growth: Kalderos currently supports compliance efforts for numerous programs, including the 340B Program, Medicaid Drug Rebate Program and, now, commercial managed care. Kalderos' drug discount management platform will soon include a point-of-sale solution, effectively preventing noncompliant drug discounts from happening in the first place. Further, Kalderos is actively building out its compliance suite to enable drug manufacturers, providers and payers greater flexibility to work together to help patients pay for the drugs they need.
Category expansion: The Kalderos platform provides unique capability for manufacturers, providers and payers to work collaboratively, offering greater freedom for all parties to design and operationalize risk-sharing agreements. Next, Kalderos plans to branch out into additional areas of healthcare that would benefit from an information exchange infrastructure, such as, for example, value-based pricing.
Growing its team of experts: Healthcare technology companies like Kalderos need healthcare experts to grow successfully. Kalderos is committed to scaling its team with proven, inspired, creative and collaborative leaders who are passionate about redefining how the business of healthcare performs.

"Kalderos is not just tackling a big problem in healthcare, it is creating an entirely new category to solve it," said Yumin Choi, partner at Bain Capital Ventures. "Compliance with drug discount programs, such as the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program or 340B, has long been an opaque and complex process, but the Kalderos platform makes it easy for providers and payers to automatically apply the right discounts to ensure patients get access to lifesaving medicines. We're excited to leverage our deep understanding in healthcare technology, coupled with expertise from Bain Capital's dedicated life sciences group, to support Kalderos on its mission to simplify and demystify the American drug discount system."

"Drug manufacturers spend significant resources ensuring compliance with a wide range of drug discount programs. Kalderos' data-centric monitoring tools simplify the identification and resolution of the many gaps in compliance in today's operations of these programs," said Mark Niemaszek, long-time pharmaceutical executive and recently retired vice president of commercial operations at Astellas Pharma. "More than monitoring noncompliance, the comprehensive preventative solution Kalderos is developing is sorely needed to ensure long-term integrity and viability of the drug discount programs in the United States."

Kalderos' solutions have already benefited stakeholders throughout the healthcare system, including providers. Recently, Kalderos launched its provider-facing Review platform to support 340B-covered entities in their claims review process.

"Kalderos has provided more clarity to the whole 340B compliance space," said Jeremiah Joson, director of pharmacy, Kern Medical. "It has simplified addressing questionable claims and instead of dealing with dozens of manufacturers simultaneously, I appreciate the consolidated portal to review claims."

Kalderos is also planning for the launch of its 501(c)(3) nonprofit arm which, once operational, aims to support patients directly by ensuring those patients who need lifesaving medications can afford them. With a patient-first mindset, the Series B funding is the first step in building out support for those patients who need it most.

Trevor Wear, Sandi Knox, Nick DeAngelis and Jake Funk of Sidley Austin LLP represented Kalderos in the negotiation process for the Series B raise. "We were delighted to represent Kalderos in this important financing transaction," said Trevor Wear, partner, Sidley Austin LLP.

Founded in Chicago in 2016, Kalderos is committed to delivering drug discount management solutions for manufacturers, providers and payers that identify and resolve noncompliance, all while building unifying technologies that bring transparency, trust and equity to the entire healthcare community.

About Kalderos

Kalderos combines industry expertise, design thinking and technology to target waste and to improve efficiency as the category leader in healthcare network management. Its initial SaaS product is the world's first drug discount management solution, which identifies, checks, and resolves non-compliance. Using sophisticated models and machine learning processes, Kalderos detects inconsistencies overlooked by current methods, providing material benefits by eliminating waste. Based in Chicago, Kalderos was founded in 2016 by a team firmly rooted in the belief that it is essential to fix this problem in order to help patients and reduce inefficiencies. More information can be found at www.kalderos.com.

About Bain Capital Ventures

Bain Capital Ventures partners with disruptive founders to accelerate their ideas to market. The firm invests from seed to growth in startups driving transformation across industries, from SaaS, infrastructure software and security to fintech and healthcare to commerce and consumer tech. The firm has helped launch and commercialize more than 240 companies, including DocuSign, Jet.com, Kiva Systems, Lime, LinkedIn, Rapid7, Redis Labs, Rent the Runway, Rubrik, SendGrid and SurveyMonkey. Bain Capital Ventures has $5.2 billion in assets under management with offices in San Francisco, New York, Boston and Palo Alto. Follow the firm via LinkedIn and Twitter.

About Mercato Partners

Based in Salt Lake City, Mercato Partners is a growth equity firm built to provide both capital and guidance for rapidly expanding companies in the technology and branded consumer segments. The experienced Mercato team of investors, analysts, and in-house performance operators navigate a sea of opportunities to fund high-growth companies and help them unlock extraordinary returns through committed collaboration. For more information, please visit www.mercatopartners.com.

SOURCE Kalderos