Solutions are in the Sewage: Biobot Analytics
What you need to know about wastewater epidemiology — Plum Alley’s rationale for investing in the future of sewage analytics.
Yesterday, Bloomberg.com announced that Biobot Analytics completed their Series A raise for 20 million led by Thursday Ventures, with participation from The Engine and American Family Insurance for Corporate and Social Impact. They were joined by Anne Wojcicki (CEO & co-founder of 23andme), Tom Knight (co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks), and our team at Plum Alley Investments. Plum Alley Investments is a VC firm investing in breakthrough technology and frontier healthcare with gender-diverse founding teams. Plum Alley has more than $50M in assets with investments across 25 portfolio companies. We focus on backing founders utilizing next-generation technology and creating a more equitable distribution of resources.
Biobot is first-to-market in commercializing the analysis of sewage waste, to unlock what it tells us about the health of our communities. Founders Mariana Matus from Mexico City and Newsha Ghaeli from Toronto both hail from MIT and bring a rigorous technical background and diverse market understanding to this set of epidemiological problems.
Big Picture
By 2050 it’s projected that around 68% of the population will be living in urban centers (ourworlddata.org), with 6.7 billion city dwellers and 3.1 billion rural dwellers. As the data revolution barrels along, it is clear that Smart Cities are the future. As advancements in data, commuting power and processing technologies continue to improve the quality of life for the majority of the US population and the world at large, innovative methods for data collection will gain importance.
- The Covid-19 pandemic has forced cities and communities to monitor behavior more closely, and certain processes that may have otherwise taken years to develop have moved ahead at a rapid pace.
- A significant facet of the Smart City is active community health-monitoring practices as the next step of healthcare.
- Data on the health of local populations provide an opportunity for governments and corporations to craft more efficient and appropriate data-driven policies on public health and corporate protocols.
5 Reasons Metrics Under the Manhole Matter Now
- The COVID-19 pandemic forced health officials, experts, scientists and researchers to look for new metrics of community health as they raced to understand the spread of the virus and how to contain it.
- Wastewater epidemiology acts as a new frontier for real-time, non-invasive and cost-effective understanding of a community’s health.
- While clinical data has been the standard for surveillance and tracking, it can be limiting when the health of the community is not accounted for and there is an inability to track asymptomatic cases.
- With the development of greater computing and data processing capabilities, city planners and governments can generate a comprehensive understanding of the local population and associated needs.
- The necessity of governments’ and corporations’ interest in non-invasive tracking of health metrics because of the pandemic has accelerated the interest in wastewater epidemiology and sewage data platforms.
4 Reasons Why Biobot is the Answer
Our confidence in Biobot and founders Mariana and Newsha came from many areas of proven performance and future promise of innovation. The ability for them to demonstrate versatility, first-mover advantage, experience and a customer base made this investment a no-brainer for us to consider for our venture fund and also to bring it forward to our syndicate member investors
- Versatility — the wastewater epidemiology platform is capable of servicing the needs of a variety of customers: local governments, national institutions, schools, universities, retirement communities, real estate owners and operators and prisons.
- First-mover advantage — Before even taking their technology to market, Biobot tested across all 50 states, covering ¼ of the U.S. population to gauge interest in this level of data on communal health for COVID-19 testing. This campaign also allowed them to normalize wastewater data as a valuable source of information for decision-makers in government.
- Experienced Team — Mariana and Newsha’s team has extensive industry and academic experience with wastewater epidemiology. Having launched initial opioid pilots in 2017, Biobot has been in the market for years. This has allowed them to develop proprietary data normalization protocols to maximize the veracity and utility of their data.
- Captive Customers — Biobot also has extensive experience working with the local communities that make up their primary customer segment. Through the COVID-19 campaign and now the CDC and HHS contract, Biobot has taken the land-grab expansion strategy. Biobot has been able to be selective about the sites they target, due to the outsized inbound interest.
Always Recurring:
While tongue and cheek, sewage will always be part of the future, creating a $100B+ wastewater epidemiology market, which includes measurement of COVID and other viruses; bacteria; opioids; drugs and pharmaceuticals; and stress and mental health markers. Wastewater epidemiology provides an unobtrusive way to measure community and workforce health, and allows for early warnings for potential outbreaks.
WHY NOW:
- Expanding Market beyond the pandemic to mental health and lifestyle measurements.
- Sewage monitoring will be a staple for the future of cities establishing themselves as part of the fabric of smart city infrastructure.
- Health is now a concern for private companies too, impacting productivity and employee retention.
- Health data has never been more valuable and wastewater epidemiology is anonymized (by nature) and provides accurate data on a communal basis.
- Predictive power of Wastewater epidemiology as a precursor to clinical data, to present warning signals towards the health of communities.
