Berlin-based Yendou, a clinical operations automation platform, announced that it has secured $1.3M (approximately €1.20M) in a pre-seed round of funding led by b2venture.
The round also saw participation from Heartfelt, Infinite Fund, and pharmaceutical industry angels including Lindus Health co-founder Meri Beckwith.
The funds aim to enhance operational efficiency in clinical trials and expedite drug development in oncology.
Solving bottlenecks in advancing new drugs
According to Yendou, annually, 41 million lives are lost to treatable diseases, and it takes 12 years and $2B to launch “groundbreaking” medicines. The lengthy clinical site selection process contributes to a third of clinical trial timelines.
Many pharmaceutical companies still use manual processes, leading to challenges in communication between tools. Yendou focuses on clinic recruitment in cancer clinical trials, addressing a gap in the industry’s approach.
Yendou CEO and co-founder, Zina Sarif, says, “Choosing the right clinic is crucial for patient recruitment success. Yendou empowers pharmaceutical companies with data to efficiently select the best clinics for their trials.”
Yendou, a clinical operations automation platform for the life sciences industry, claims to serve as the first CRM tool in research and development. It helps clinical operations teams accelerate and scale site selection to activation timelines for oncology clinical trials globally.
Co-founder Sarif adds, “We like to think of ourselves as Salesforce for R&D teams in life sciences, offering a unique value proposition by providing a curated pool of qualified clinical leads at their fingertips.”
“We are creating a knowledge automation platform for clinical researchers to eliminate repetitive work, empowering teams to consolidate information and accelerate the pace of clinical trials delivery to clinics.”
Launched in March 2023, Yendou gained traction with over 1,200 clinicians across 46 countries. Responding to demand, the platform enters closed beta for pharmaceutical and biotech firms, facilitating site selection and onboarding for Phase II and Phase III oncology trials.
Sarif, a clinical researcher with a Ph.D., and Patrick Rogg, a software engineer, co-founded Yendou.
Brief about the lead investor
Founded in 2000, b2venture claims to be one of Europe’s most experienced venture capital firms.
With a focus on early-stage investments through dedicated funds and stage-agnostic investments via its direct investment track, b2venture supports unique entrepreneurs and groundbreaking ideas.
Originating in St. Gallen, Switzerland, the firm has expanded with offices in Berlin, Zurich, Munich, and Luxembourg.
Deploying over €100M annually across Europe, b2venture claims to have built a robust investor community and has backed companies including 1KOMMA5°, DeepL, Facebook, Raisin, Foodspring, ORCAM, SumUp, Volocopter, and XING.
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