SOUTHBOROUGH, MA— RxAdvance, a pharmacy benefits management company, announced that Uber co-founder Oscar Salazar, and Walter Jin, founder of Carlyle Healthcare Group, have invested in Series-A funding round and join the RxAdvance board. The company did not disclose the amount.
Southborough, MA-based RxAdvance was founded by Ravi Ika, who serves as the company’s President and the Chief Executive Officer. In addition Ika, there are several Indian-Americans in the top executive positions at the company. They include Anand Tati, Chief Operating Officer; Prakash Tallabattula, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer; Madu Narahari, Executive Vice President, Implementations; and Bijendra Malik, Executive Vice President and Chief Security Officer.
Indian-American entrepreneur Subu Kota, president of the Boston Group USA, serves on the board of RxAdvance. Other Indian-American board members include Devaiah Pagidipati and Krishna Ika.
“It is a game-changer for RxAdvance with Uber c0-founder Oscar Salazar joining our team,” Kota told IndUS Business Journal.
“We are honored to have two of the leading minds in disruptive technology and business as our investment partners and board members. We at RxAdvance feel that their high-tech experience and guidance will help to transform the $770 billion PBM and associated avoidable drug-impacted medical spend that is long overdue for innovation,” Ika said in a statement.
Jin was the co-founder of The Healthcare Group at The Carlyle Group. Jin currently serves as the Executive Chairman of Pager and has over 20 years of investment and operational experience in the healthcare sector. He is the co-founder of Three Fields Capital and Pacific Healthcare Management, which manage a portfolio of private equity and venture capital healthcare investments. He is a graduate of Harvard University and currently serves as an Executive in Residence at Johns Hopkins Medicine and an Innovation Fellows Technical Advisor to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“Our goal is to leverage disruptive technology and world-class design to reinvent healthcare and deliver cost savings and efficiencies,” said Salazar and Jin. “We are proud to join the RxAdvance board, as its accountable drug benefit management practice and risk-sharing business models are timely in this antiquated industry and are perfectly aligned with the healthcare investments in which we are involved.”
“In the recent years, several successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and blue chip companies have entered the healthcare vertical to disrupt and transform, in vain. This lack of success can be attributed to the absence of substantial business and revenue models, disruptive service offerings, and a proven track record in the complex healthcare eco-system,” says John Sculley, former Apple CEO and Vice Chairman of RxAdvance. “What impressed me about Ravi and his team at RxAdvance is that they have all the essential components for success – a widely proven and successful revenue model, a solid platform and innovative thinking, a proven track record, and deep healthcare domain expertise capable of disrupting traditional paradigms throughout the care continuum. Through its innovative Collaborative PBM Cloud.”
He said RxAdvance is challenging large incumbent PBMs by disrupting their decades-old business and revenue models, and their risk-sharing models are unheard of in the PBM market.
“I believe this model will pave the path for new entrants from Silicon Valley. Oscar and Walter’s participation is a great testament to the proven model established by RxAdvance,” said Sculley.
RxAdvance is a national full-service pharmacy benefit manager that leverages Collaborative PBM Cloud™ to deliver integrated PBM services that reduce overall pharmacy costs, optimize specialty spend by converting from “buy and bill” to “manage and authorize”, and reduce avoidable drug-impacted medical costs while improving patient’s quality of life with unmatched regulatory compliance and transparency. In addition, RxAdvance offers a global pharmacy risk partnership model standing shoulder-to-shoulder with plan sponsors.
