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Let’s Make a Deal: Bayer G4A Seeks Healthcare Innovation Solutions

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Congratulations! You’ve put in through the hard work to create a new healthcare technology product or solution, and now you’re at the stage where you’re ready to sell it. All you need is a shot at a big corporate client. But when the prospective clients have thousands of employees, dozens of locations, and operations on five continents, where should a small business start?
Creating a new product from nothing seems like an amazing challenge, but what it really takes to be successful is customers! Businesses need a customer base willing to pay for the benefits of your solution and provide sales dollars (or Euros, or Yen!) that can be plowed into growing the business. And, often, that’s the challenge: Getting that great idea out of the ideation stage into the implementation stage.
As a global corporation advancing both health and nutrition, that’s where Bayer comes in: They want to help you gain a foothold in the marketplace.
Enter Dealmaker, a competition from Bayer’s G4A

Wheeling and Dealing

Originally founded in 2013, G4A is a Berlin-based global program that offers support to small startups that have developed innovative health and care solutions. The program’s initial goal was to award grants to healthcare apps, but, over the past five years, the program has significantly expanded.
As the G4A team reached out to young companies, they saw real passion and innovation … but not necessarily the resources to make it in the health and care marketplace. The G4A team decided to take action “Why don’t we create a new program to fast-track commercial partnerships?” asked Dr. Zsu Varga, global head of Bayer’s G4A Digital Health Partnerships Programs, in episode 64 of our podcast. “That’s how Dealmaker was born.”

How Dealmaker Works

What Dealmaker offers to healthcare startups is a partnership with Bayer. The companies the Dealmaker team chooses “know their business model and have a product on the market,” explained Varga.
In 2017, the very first year of the Dealmaker program, the G4A program received more than 1,000 applications. Of those applicants, Bayer selected 30 companies, inviting them to Berlin for Dealmaker Day, a matchmaking event with the G4A team. The businesses pitched their ideas and products to determine whether they fit into one of Bayer’s areas of healthcare focus.
Those meetings yielded letters of intent with 10 of the companies in attendance. “Half have really materialized into running projects, so those companies acquired Bayer as a customer,” Varga said.
One such collaboration born from the 2017 Dealmaker program includes Kaiku, a platform focused on improving the patient experience throughout clinical trials. Kaiku partnered with Bayer to improve patient experiences in oncology trials.
Bayer is working with another Dealmaker startup, MedShr, a peer-to-peer learning platform for physicians, which is working with Bayer to facilitate the exchange of physicians on women’s health topics.
G4A’s Dealmaker program provides a lot of support and visibility for early-stage businesses. What that support looks like, however, depends on the size, scope, and needs of that particular business or product.
In 2018, applicants can apply through Bayer’s current focus areas:

  • Established and/or Mature Products
  • Radiology
  • Women’s Health
  • Ophthalmology
  • Pulmonology
  • New Product Commercialization
  • R&D
  • Hematology
  • Oncology
  • Cardiovascular

Get in on the Ground Floor

Do you think you might have the next revolutionary idea or product in patient-safe solutions, big data platforms, or surgical wearables? Don’t wait! Apply now for the 2018 G4A Global Dealmaker program. Simply click here to apply. From there, it only takes a few minutes to register your company and pitch your startup for a potential commercial deal with Bayer.
Entries are due by July 8; applicants will receive notification in September as to whether they’re invited to Berlin. The matchmaking event, called Dealmaker Day, takes place Oct. 9.
For the latest news on Bayer’s G4A programs, visit the G4A website, follow them on Twitter, or search for the #G4A hashtag.

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