Lumary eyes US healthcare market with $5m capital raise
An Adelaide technology start-up has doubled its workforce in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and is now eyeing expansion into the lucrative US healthcare market on the back of a $5m capital raising.
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Technology start-up Lumary has kicked off a $5m capital raise ahead of plans to expand into the lucrative US healthcare market.
It follows a period of rapid expansion for the Adelaide-based company, which has doubled its workforce to around 80 since the start of the year.
Once the latest round of funding is secured, the company plans to boost that number with an additional 60-odd staff by June, including a team of more than 20 staff in the US.
Tech entrepreneurs Joseph Mercorella and Matthew English established Lumary in 2017 after identifying a need for new software to manage the complex relationships between providers, consumers and others participating in the NDIS.
It has since developed a range of Salesforce-backed workflow management and other digital platforms, offering disability and aged care providers an “end-to-end” system for scheduling, resourcing, accounting, document management, communication and reporting.
Mr Mercorella, the company’s chief executive, said three US healthcare experts were engaged early this year to investigate opportunities for the company to expand into the US healthcare market, which was ripe for disruption.
“In the US market there are a lot of organisations that don't want progression to happen,” he said.
“Most of the existing vendors there are so big and powerful that they’ll just block, restrict or do whatever they can, so there’s a huge problem of interoperability - it’s not sustainable but it’s to protect revenue streams.
“But the government is trying to open up channels for information to be shared so the receiver of care can have better access to information and can share information.
“Lumary’s position now is that we disrupted the Australian market - let’s do it again.”
Lumary employs close to 60 staff in its Adelaide headquarters, while satellite offices across the country help to support more than 200 customers.
“We’ve looked to hire in Adelaide as much as we can,” Mr Mercorella said.
“There are some things that we’ll keep hiring for here - we’re pretty keen on making sure that engineering and product remains here, and that’s a good thing for our state because there’s not a lot of tech firms here.”
Mr Mercorella said after a brief pause in activity during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company was soon fielding a record level of inquiries from prospective customers.
“The leads all came back, the interest all came back - there was more of a tech appetite because many organisations appreciated that they needed to transform as a business,” he said.
“For the first time ever, in the past nine months, we actually have competitors who are taking our model to market and trying to do the exact same thing - they’ve recognised this is the long term play.
“We’ve had over 80 per cent year on year growth so we’re expecting good things from this cap raise.”
Lumary secured a $2m investment from venture capital firm Equity Venture Partners last year. It expects to go to market in the US early next year.