Mavie’s inspiring corporate venture journey and how they successfully leverage UNIQA’s assets

Corporate Entrepreneurship Stories #5 – Mavie 

Mavie’s venture journey and the relationship with the mother company UNIQA

Corporate Entrepreneurship Stories is a series of conversations between Pioneers and corporate venture founders. We aim to shed light on successes, failures, and learnings and to share best practices to inspire and encourage corporate entrepreneurs and managers to drive innovation. 

We met up with Erich Kruschitz, CEO of Mavie, a corporate venture of UNIQA. Erich joined UNIQA back in 2009, where he was working in the risk- and asset management area. Soon, management realized his ability to shape change and assigned him to transform the finance division as Head of Group Finance in 2011. Within 5 years, he rebuilt the whole unit, rolled-out SAP in 17 countries, and created an in-house training academy before deciding to leave for an executive MBA in France, Singapore, and Silicon Valley. Through his time abroad and the exchange with many professionals and VCs from other countries, he realized a new business opportunity for UNIQA: entering the healthcare market.

In this conversation, we talk about the journey of Mavie from the first idea to a 40-person team generating revenue in the double-digit million range.  

Michael Lunzer, Pioneers:
Hey Erich, nice to meet you. Before we dive into the business of Mavie, can you tell us a little bit more about the original decision of UNIQA to enter the health space? How did you recognize the opportunity? Was it a strategic or opportunistic move?

Erich Kruschitz, CEO Mavie:
Nice to meet you as well. Sure, I am happy to tell you more. While doing my MBA, I traveled a lot and also got to present myself and UNIQA at different events and workshops. Talking about UNIQA’s insurance offers, health professional networks, and own hospitals, several people asked why the company – given its strong health assets – is not offering any health services itself. It made me think about the business potential and I realized that there could be an interesting opportunity in the health space. In 2020, when I was back at UNIQA, the management team and I joined a strategy retreat with leading entrepreneurship professors from Harvard. There, we jointly discussed how UNIQA can build up new business outside the core and explore new business streams. The topic of providing health services came up quickly, and especially the CEO of UNIQA, who still remains in this role today, was a strong supporter of exploring the market potential in the health sector. After the retreat, I analyzed the topic together with a team of UNIQA employees and we found compelling reasons to take a shot at it. Consequently, management agreed to invest and I was offered to lead the new venture.

During the offsite retreat, we learned that exploration topics require a certain distance from the core business and dedicated resources. Thus, as a prerequisite for leading the venture, I had to leave my old job and fully dedicate myself to Mavie. To complete the team with an additional 10 full-time resources, we did an internal hiring campaign and received 30 applications, many from people who were part of the team exploring the health services potential. With this crew, we started our work to build up the health business for UNIQA.

How big is your team today and how many from the original crew are still there? 

Today, we are 38 FTEs. Actually, from the initial team, there is only one person left besides me. I guess as the CEO it’s easier [laughs]. For many, the fast speed and constant changes were too much to handle. Today, we are mainly hiring externally and rarely from UNIQA. 

Thanks for sharing – super interesting story and developments. From our experience, we also see that opportunities outside the core need a fully focused and flexible team. At the same time, using the core assets is essential to outplay startups on the open market. But let’s talk about that later.

Let’s first talk about Mavie’s business today. Many of us have already heard of Mavie (former Sanus X), but can you introduce us to what you are offering today?

At Mavie we offer a whole range of different solutions and also consist of a group of different companies. Under our company Mavie Next, we engage in both venture building – developing our own solutions – and strategic investments – taking equity in external ventures or startups. Today our portfolio of services consists of Mavie Work, offering health care services for companies and employees, Mavie.me, a B2C home blood and microbiome test kit, Cura Domo, a 24-hour senior care at home service, and Telemedi, a telehealth provider running 600.000 consultations per year. 

Thanks for the overview, that’s a lot of different businesses…

Yes, we aim to become a holistic health service provider by 2030 generating revenues of €100 million per year from 2025. Currently, we are strongly focused on growth. From after 2025, we will also put a stronger focus on profitability.

That’s a bold goal considering that there are only 6 years left. Where do you stand today and how will be the distribution of revenues between self-built ventures and external ones by 2030?

I can’t share exact numbers, but we are currently in the lower two-digit million range. There is still a way to go, but we believe we can do it. We strictly monitor our growth path and have quarterly reviews with management to make corrections. Concerning the distribution, we see that external investments will have a larger share as many of them are already in the scaling phase, but also self-built ventures will make a considerable contribution.  

Let’s dive into the development process. How do you develop your own ventures? Do you have a defined approach or process? 

When we started exploring the health business, we did ideation and early validation ourselves but quickly realized that there are organizations outside of UNIQA with deeper know-how in this field. Thus, we decided to partner and outsource large parts of the early idea phase. In this phase, we act as a strategic sparring partner and provide feedback.

In the beginning, we worked with a VC from London who is also teaching at INSEAD business school. Together with “Entprepreneur in Residence” students from all over Europe, we develop and pre-validate new healthcare ideas and we take them over once they pass our selection criteria. In some cases, we also hire these students then for the ventures to continue their journeys with us.

And for investing?

We constantly check new targets within defined “Investable Themes”. Having identified a potential partner, we go through the usual process of due diligence and also test their solutions in a pilot or other test procedures. If that works out as expected, we quickly ramp up scaling.

From an organizational/structural perspective, do you have two different teams, one for venture building and one for the investment path? 

Yes, exactly. Of course, the teams exchange and share their learnings but both streams also require a different team setup, assets and skills.

Talking about assets: at Pioneers we see that corporate ventures can only be largely successful and beat startups on the open market when using their mother company’s core assets. What’s your opinion? How is Mavie using the core assets of UNIQA? 

First of all, I think it’s absolutely vital for a corporate venture to have the backing of the C-level of the mother company. Without the backing, we surely would have been dead by now. 

How do you “use” this asset? 

I have regular meetings – on a weekly basis – with the CEO of UNIQA to discuss the strategy and growth path of Mavie. These meetings are super important to align our goals with the overall company strategy and overcome any barriers resulting from our special relationship with the mother company. Besides the CEO, I can call any of the UNIQA board members anytime and will get support, which was very helpful on many occasions in the past. Of course, a strong relationship also requires building up trust. Thus, our team also reports to the board on a monthly basis. In addition,  each quarter the board members join our team to check the progress. These are not always just fun chats, we also receive highly critical feedback that helps us to improve our business concepts and ultimately enhance our performance.

Besides the top management, do you take advantage of other UNIQA assets?

Yes. Firstly, in the early phase of building up Mavie, we strongly profited from the market credibility and image of UNIQA. It opened many doors that startups on the open market usually cannot get access to easily. Secondly, UNIQA is a huge company with 14.000 employees and 17m customers. This provides us with vast opportunities for business testing. To provide an example, we use the large employee base to actively run surveys around our products and services and thus get valuable feedback for further developments.

Thirdly, UNIQA operates 5 private hospitals with diverse healthcare professionals who understand the market, regulatory environment, and health diagnosis processes. Furthermore, UNIQA has a strong legal and finance department where we can get valuable feedback and difficult-to-access information. In many developments, we reach out to those experts to get quick insights and support.
We try to use any chance to promote our services within UNIQA to get more supporters inside the mothership.

How is that working out so far? Are there also blockers within the mother company? What about UNIQA client access? Can you use the sales network for your sales as well?

Of course, not everybody welcomes us with open arms. From the beginning, it has been quite tricky to convince local sales reps. Sales reps are already selling their own insurance and get commissions. Our products are not easy for them to understand and of course, people rather sell what with they are familiar. 

Any learnings you can share about how to get past this barrier?

We have tried multiple things already. What we realized is that we need to make it easy for salespeople to sell our products. For that reason, we have implemented several internal trainings about our products, showcase our solutions at internal events and we offer our UNIQA sales colleagues to join them in their sales meetings in case they require support. Lastly, we also offer all our services to UNIQA employees and hand out samples on any occasion. Step-by-step we are also gaining momentum in the core organization.

Sounds like you are on the right path, indeed. How do you see your background working at UNIQA for many years impacting these developments?

For sure, my background helps a lot to open doors within the mother company. I still know many UNIQA colleagues from old times and they know me. So, I strongly believe that the leadership team of a corporate venture should also somehow have roots or strong relationships with the mother company to make good use of its assets. 

Last question: What’s the future of Mavie? 

Well, firstly we want to achieve our goal of €100 million in revenues by the end of 2025. Although this is not a highly significant size for UNIQA, further growth from there will transform our healthcare business into an important part of the group in the future.

We also don’t see our products and services as separate offerings, but rather embedded into an ecosystem of offerings, in the best case with a single sign-on for the user. Logging on to Mavie’s plattform should give the user the full range of health care services. There, we can also cross-sell any additional services from external players and help clients solve multiple health issues in one place.

Very interesting and definitely an inspiring vision. Thanks, Erich for your time and the insights. Looking forward to hearing news from Mavie.