Zug, Switzerland-based SkyCell, a company transforming the pharmaceutical supply chain, announced on Tuesday that it has closed $116M (approximately €108M) in a Series D funding round.
Out of the total amount, $59M (approximately €55M) was contributed by Tybourne Capital Management and CCI, while an additional $57M (approximately €53M) in equity investment was provided by Catalyst, M&G Investments’ purpose-led private assets strategy.
The Swiss company will use the latest capital to further expand its global presence, with a strong focus on growth in the US and Asia.
Richard Ettl, co-founder, and CEO of SkyCell, says, “It is such an exciting time to be a technology provider to the pharma industry as the sector experiences fast growth from new, blockbuster biologics coming to market. At the same time, the industry has recognised the need to decarbonise the supply chain, as more than 70% of pharma is shipped in a one-way solution, which will shortly see fees introduced for disposal. Our reusable 1500X container saves on average 50% CO2 or in absolute terms 8 tons CO2e per use. This means for a typical pharma customer today we save more than 250 ‘000 tons of CO2 every year without compromising quality.”
“And finally, digitalisation is coming to pharma supply chains – moving away from manual worksheets to integrated workflows that leverage S+O data (simulated and operational data) from our proprietary pool of billions of data points. Combined with the power of AI, this enables significant reductions in both cost and risk for our customers. With this new investment, we can further optimise supply chains and create truly sustainable logistics,” adds Ettl.
SkyCell: Helping pharmaceutical supply chains
Founded by Nico Ros and Richard Ettl, SkyCell serves pharmaceutical supply chains with temperature-controlled hybrid containers and technological solutions that prevent damage to vital medicine while protecting the environment.
According to the company’s claims, its containers protect more than $2.5B of pharmaceutical goods, including hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines, cancer treatments, diabetes care, and diagnostic solutions for patients around the world.
With access to historical data from its large connected container fleet as well as advanced forecasting analytics, SkyMind can use data to prevent the loss of medications with better predictability.
The company’s proprietary software solution combines simulation data with operational data (S+O data), enabling pharma companies to have real-time, end-to-end oversight of every shipment around the world getting life-changing drugs to consumers faster.
The DECARBONIZE tool is part of the software suite, enabling clients to predict, track, and report CO2 emissions as well as optimise routes to minimise their carbon footprint.
SkyCell’s sustainable technologies reduce the failure rate during transit to less than 0.05 per cent and cut CO2 impact by almost half the average rate.
SkyCell’s Chief Financial Officer, Dr Remo Gerber, says, “Gaining CCI and Tybourne as investors significantly broadens our footprint in the US and Asia and is a testament to our high growth based on strong financial business fundamentals. Having built the technological foundations in cold chain hardware and software/IoT-enabled tracking this investment enables us to commercialise our platform into adjacent pharma market segments, significantly expanding our total addressable market beyond cold chain packaging.”
The investor
Tybourne Capital Management is a global, growth-oriented, fundamental equity investor in public and private markets.
The company manages long-duration capital on behalf of prominent non-profits, university endowments, sovereigns, corporate pensions, and family offices
Bosun Hau, Managing Director and Head of Private Equity at Tybourne Capital Management says, “With its lead in hardware as well as software and tracking platform offering, SkyCell is well positioned to become the technology partner of choice to the global pharmaceutical industry well beyond its current cold-chain logistics business. Global supply chains are becoming increasingly complex and managing risk is a board-level issue for nearly every sector – for pharmaceutical companies, in particular, it is mission critical for getting life-saving medications into the hands of patients.”
“SkyCell has developed a comprehensive state-of-the-art system combining hardware, software and big data analytics that is transforming a pharmaceutical logistics industry that has seen little innovation over the past several decades,” adds Hau.
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