At a time when robotics is being embraced by healthcare professionals and hospitals to reduce human error and recovery time, Robocath, a French robotic startup has announced that it has secured €40 million Series C funding. This investment comes months after the startup raised €5 million to support the rollout of its robotic platform in strategic European target markets.
The funding round was led by MicroPort Scientific Corporation, a major listed industrial player in the cardiovascular field along with participation from institutional investors such as Zhejiang Silk Road Fund, Luxembourg CLIIF managed under TUS-Holdings, CS Group and Anaxago and existing investors.
How will the investment be used?
Robocath designs, develops and commercialises cardiovascular robotic systems to treat vascular diseases and will use the investment to aggressively expand its sales and marketing efforts for R-One, its first robotic-assisted platform. The company will also use the company to broaden and accelerate the development of its second-generation robot that will address ore PCI procedures and start neurovascular and peripheral applications.
Strategic agreement to set up joint venture
As a result of the investment, Robocath and MicroPort have signed a strategic agreement to set up a joint venture company. MicroPort has a strong expertise in medical devices manufacturing and commercialisation since its establishment in 1998. The company has grown drastically since 2014 with an average turnover growth of over 17% and has been listed on the Hong-Kong Stock Exchange Marker since September 2010.
Commercialisation of R-One
With the joint-venture, Robocath will open the Asian market with the commercialisation of its R-One robotic-assisted platform. The expansion will be facilitated by local manufacturing of consumables and assembly for optimal distribution of Robocath products in the Asian market. And, both companies will perform R&D activities related to next-generation long-distance remote control over 5G and will develop AI algorithms to be used with robotic-assisted platforms.
“We believe that the future growth of medical device therapies will be driven by innovative robotics platform technologies to facilitate procedures and open up next-generation capabilities such as remote and AI,” said Dr. Alex He, general manager of Medbot (MicroPort’s robotics subsidiary). “We are thrilled to partner with Robocath to commercialize its highly innovative proprietary vascular robotics platform in the Chinese market.”
“With this financing round, Robocath enters a new phase in its strategic development. I am proud of how far we have come since the creation of the company and would like to thank all our historical shareholders for their renewed support and our new shareholders for their strong buy-in to our plans”, said Philippe Bencteux, chairman and founder of Robocath. “I’m delighted to welcome Mr. Jonathan Chen, chief international business officer at MicroPort, Dr. Alex He, general manager of Medbot, a MicroPort’s robotics subsidiary, and Mr. Haitong Wang, managing partner at Zhejiang Silk Road Fund, to our strategic committee.”
Main image picture credits: Robocath
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