This past week’s notable investing deals.
410Medical – today’s spotlight image is the maker of “LifeFlow,” a hand-powered rapid infuser of fluids for critically ill patients to combat sepsis, the body’s immune response to bacterial infection that gets into the blood and a frequent cause of death among hospitalized patients (my own grandmother died of sepsis in 2004). $3.3 million in Seed A from Bios Partners. Based in North Carolina.
Haqdarshak – Haqdarshak is building a multi-state, multi-lingual platform to help people living below the poverty line find out about, apply for, and benefit from, government programs. Raised over $190,000 from local angel investors, which the social enterprise will use to expand its reach to 5,000 government programs from the 1,500 already on its platform. They are also looking to expand its staff. Based in Mumbai and Delhi in India.
BioClin – gets $30 million in funding to help it move forward with more tests of its experimental treatment for bladder cancer. Soffinnova Ventures and Ysios Capital led the round. Based in San Ramon, California.
Semma Therapeutics – biopharma company that is developing stem cell-based therapy solutions for type 1 diabetes (T1D), announced it has received an investment from the JDRF T1D Fund, a venture philanthropy fund. Terms not disclosed. Based in Cambridge, Mass.
Drivemode – platform over mobile to reduce distractions for drivers via an eyes-free interface designed to access smartphone functions like navigation, messaging, calls, entirely via voice. $6.5 million in a new Series A round, led by Panasonic. Based in San Jose, California.
Twist Bioscience – developer of a high-throughput manufacturing platform for synthetic DNA, has raised an additional $33 million. While there is much to debate about advancing synthetic biology, its promises to find cures for chronic killers of humanity such as cancer or malaria are more compelling compared to fears of potential misuse and unintended consequences. Still, research ought to press forward. Based in San Francisco.
Elevate Credit – online issuer of non-prime loans and innovative “responsible lending” products, competitively priced credit to service the large market of over 150 million non-prime or credit-invisible consumers. Its $124 million IPO may be timely, according to CNBC. Based in Fort Worth, Texas.
VitalTrax – platform over mobile called Wing to help patients search for clinical trials and apply to become a volunteer and a modular, web-based application for enterprises to manage patient trials. $150K seed fund from Safeguard Scientifics, Ben Franklin Technology Partners and Independence Blue Cross. Based in Philadelphia. (In a separate development, foreign investment is eyeing PPD, LLC, a clinical trial concern, based in North Carolina)
DataWorld – social hub and single data-platform to connect researchers, data practitioners and data scientists to collaborate on big problems requiring data-crunching. $18.7 million via philanthropist Pat Ryan and Chicago Ventures and Shasta Ventures. Based in Austin, Texas.
Janajal – its water ATM’s make clean, drinking water more accessible to more than 75 million consumers in India via its vast network of railway stations. $5 million investment commitment from North Carolina-based Tricolour Cleantech Capital, a social impact fund focused on clean technologies. Janajal is based in Mumbai, Hyderabad, New York US.
In other news, Wall Street Journal Wednesday’s Blackrock headline in today’s Wall Street Journal is certain to be a bellwether for impact investing if not the entire industry overall – bets to increase usage of quantitative algorithms and to, for some of the firm’s funds according to the article, increase focus on social impact.
Sources: Crunchbase, TechCrunch, SEC, ImpactAlpha, Wall Street Journal
