Axio Biosolutions eyes expansion

A personal experience with a bike accident changed how life turned out for bio-engineering student Leo Mavely. Now the chief executive officer of Axio Biosolutions, a Bangalore headquartered healthcare startup, which has a manufacturing facility in Ahmedabad, Mavely’s company makes a sponge-like biomaterial that stops profuse bleeding from wounds within minutes.

The trauma care and device company that makes this proprietary material called Axiostat (absorbable haemostatic dressing), which has so far sold around 100,000 units since 2014. With its new facility, and an eye on entering new verticals, Axio Biosolutions hopes to sell around 20 million pieces in the next five years.

Axiostat, the haemostatic dressing, uses chitosan, a naturally occurring material extracted from shellfish. The product, which looks like a dry sponge, immediately attaches itself to the open wound and it acts like an adhesive seal that not only stops blood from leaking but also protects the wound from external infections for around 48 hours.

While the army is its biggest customer, the other verticals are hospitals and emergency trauma care services like ambulances. As Mavely explains, they are now in talks with cab aggregators to keep such haemostatic dressing kits in all of their cars. This, if comes through, it would increase the market by a few hundred thousand units per year. This apart, there are plans to enter the industrial segment as well, Mavely says.

“These kits can help to provide immediate medical care in case of factory accidents. This is a new vertical that we are looking at entering," he adds. The firm is coming up with a kit. “We plan to have this at schools, colleges, cabs, cars. We are starting to pilot this in January, and would first start with a few thousand kits for industrial use, as we see an immediate demand there, ” Mavely explains.