Yendou, a Berlin-based startup that self-bills as Salesforce for R&D teams in life sciences, has secured $1.3 million in a pre-seed funding round. The investment will allow the startup to scale its clinical operations automation platform and meet a growing demand from pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
The pre-seed investment round was led by b2venture with support from Heartfelt, Infinita Fund, and several angel investors hailing from the pharmaceutical industry including Meri Beckwith, co-founder of Peter Thiel-backed startup Lindus Health.
The new drug bottleneck
On average, new medicine will take between 10 to 15 years and can cost upwards of $2 billion before it reaches the market. The most expensive and time-consuming portion of new drug development occurs during clinical trials, with the selection of clinical sites alone contributing to a third of the time it takes to conduct a clinical trial.
Numerous pharmaceutical companies continue to rely on highly manual processes, often those involving spreadsheets and a fragmented landscape of software products, to collect and manage clinical data.
Due to this disparate workflow, when data changes in one system, manual updates are often required downstream, and in many cases, doesn’t happen.
Salesforce for R&D teams
This is precisely where Yendou’s CRM for R&D platform steps in the bridge the divide.
Yendou CEO, co-founder, and former biochemist with over a decade of experience in cancer drug discovery, Zina Sarif elaborates:
"We like to think of ourselves as Salesforce for R&D teams in life sciences, offering a unique value proposition by providing a curated pool of qualified clinical leads at their fingertips.
"We are creating a knowledge automation platform for clinical researchers to eliminate repetitive work, empowering teams to consolidate information and accelerate the pace of clinical trials delivery to clinics.”
Rapid adoption
Since launching in March 2023, Yendou has garnered interest and adoption from some 1,200 clinicians spanning 46 countries, with one unnamed individual credited only as "Head of Study Start-Up" at a biotech generating >$2 billion in annual revenue, Europe stating:
"Yendou is a game-changer for us. The CDA management feature alone saves us weeks of work. It's amazing how Yendou transforms our chaotic processes into efficient, streamlined operations. Truly, a competitive advantage in our field."
Spurred on by the positive results and engagement from clinicians, Yendou has since opened its platform to pharmaceutical companies via a closed beta offering. In doing so, the startup is providing a mechanism for pharma and biotech companies to seamlessly connect, select, and onboard clinical trial sites for Phase II and Phase III oncology trials.
On the investment, Yendou pre-seed lead investor b2venture’s Johanna Junkermann commented:
“We were impressed by the entire Yendou team and their ability to immediately generate market traction.
“Her deep understanding of the problem, coupled with an extensive network in the industry, positions her and her team uniquely to lead the charge in creating a category-defining product for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.”
Lead image: Yendou co-founders Patrick Rogg and Zina Sarif (left to right)
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