Competitive Landscape - Verily
Formerly known as Google Life Sciences, Verily is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., which develops tools and platforms through combined efforts with its partners to enhance the means in which healthcare is distributed. The company offers collaboration services for building devices, designing software application and programs, consultancy and research in biomedical systems engineering, nanotechnology, and systems biology. Most of the requested information on Verily has been entered into rows 3 through 12 of column Q of the attached spreadsheet. VERILY:
- Key Insights: Temasek purchased non-controlling interest in the company in 2017 for approximately $800 million. The following year in December, the company was given about $900 million of a $1 billion investment pledge.
- Main Ambition: Its primary goal is to consolidate life sciences and technology to disclose new revelations about disease and health, aiming to renovate the healthcare system.
- Overall company offering & mission: Verily's primary mission is to develop devices and tools that assist in accumulating and arranging health data to both regulate and thwart disease in an effort to ensure that health data is beneficial so individuals can appreciate healthier lives.
- Specific pillars of offering: Verily’s services encompasses categories such as hardware, software, healthcare, and science. For hardware, the company creates powerful and convenient devices meant to assist with therapeutic intervention, while for software, it develops applications and programs to enhance patients' healthcare outcomes. Meanwhile, for healthcare, Verily provides consulting and expertise from healthcare researchers and health economists, among others, and for science, it offers research.
- Partnership: Verily has collaborated with iRhythm for atrial fibrillation and partnered with Dexcom for a miniaturized CGM. The company has also collaborated with Alcon for a smart lens program and Nikon for retinal imaging.
Research Strategy:
Though most of the requested information was readily available, details on the scope of the market, notable product launches, and revenue were not.
Our research began by reviewing Verily's website and searching for its annual reports, which provides comprehensive data about a company. We discovered that Verily is a private, newly founded (2015) entity. Nonetheless, we found that Alphabet Inc. owns Verily, which mentions Verily in its 2018 Annual Report. It lists Verily under 'Other Bets,' which is the operating segment of Alphabet Inc. and does not merit an individual report because it does not meet the quantitative thresholds to qualify as a reportable segment. These are Alphabet’s subsidiaries/other businesses, which are emerging business and in the stage of commercializing. Thus, there is no separate reporting for Verily.
Additionally, it states that 'Other Bets' have a combined revenue of $118 million, but these consist of four to five businesses, and we could not determine how much of this revenue came from Verily. Also, the report did not reveal other details such as the exact number of clients and notable product launches. Note that Verily's product is R&D services for leading life science companies, and Verily does not own products from these services.
Next, we searched for third-party company/organization databases such as ZoomInfo, Crunchbase, Craft, and similar sites to look for Verily's revenue information. However, Crunchbase's sources came from Owler, which is not accurate, while ZoomInfo reported $670 million, which is also inaccurate based on Alphabet's annual report. We also looked for information on Verily's other branches internationally, but while the company profile was available, there was no information on the scope of market and number of clients.
Afterward, we looked for industry reports from life sciences leading associations such as Life Science Professional Organization, International Association of Life Science Network, and International Life Sciences Institute. We aimed to discover if Verily is a member of the international groups, which would allow us to assume that they have a global scope, or if there is a member profile that could provide additional information, particularly for revenue and recent product launches. However, after scanning their publications, we did not find such information.
Finally, we searched for press releases from international sites such as Europe Press Release, PRNewswire, Asia Research News, and others to look for any collaboration or partnership announcements between Verily and international-based pharmaceutical or life sciences companies to prove that Verily serves an international market. However, we did not find such information.
We then looked for a list of clients of Verily. However, there were few clients mentioned that are multinational corporations, and we cannot determine which country these clients were based or if they provided any reviews. It appears that most of these projects are still ongoing. Clicking the contact page only resulted in displaying an email address, instead of a headquarters or branch locations.
A probable reason for the lack of information is that Verily is considered an emerging business from Alphabet. Note that Verily is still in a nascent stage. Even its website contains limited information about the company.