You are Ricardo Lazcano-Pedraza, CEO of Analítica Jalisco, a Guadalajara maker of premium clinical-chemistry analysers. A startup's cheap, portable, "good-enough" device has been climbing from the bottom of your market. This year it reached the mainstream. You have to decide what your firm does about it.
The situation
Analítica Jalisco builds the benchtop blood-chemistry analysers that sit in the central laboratories of large Mexican hospitals and reference labs. For thirty years the firm has won on the things those customers care about most: precision, the widest certified test menu, and reliability under heavy throughput. Margins are excellent. The customers are loyal, sophisticated, and demanding — and every one of them wants more capability, not less.
Five years ago a Monterrey startup launched a small, portable point-of-care analyser. It ran a short menu of common tests, its precision was mediocre, and your central-lab customers dismissed it. But primary-care clinics, pharmacies and rural health posts loved it — cheap, fast, results in minutes at the patient's side. Each new generation added tests and accuracy. This year it cleared certification for the mainstream hospital menu. Your head of sales has lost three mid-tier hospital tenders to it in two quarters.