Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.
Bloomer Tech, a US-based women’s cardiovascular diagnostics spinout of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), raised $3m in seed capital yesterday led by venture firm Material Impact and including multiple angel investors along with One Brave Idea, a coronary heart disease research centre driven by MIT and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Bloomer has devised a bra that performs cardiovascular diagnostics using medical-grade sensors in combination with machine learning. The funding will facilitate clinical pilot testing and data acquisition as Bloomer aims to refine its product.
Toxys, a Netherlands-based provider of animal-free lab tests spun out of Leiden University Medical Center, obtained €2m ($2.2m) yesterday from investors including financial services firm Rabobank and state-owned investment bodies InnovationQuarter and Zeeuws Investment Fund. The deal was filled out by Kikk Capital and unnamed members of Toxys’s management team. Toxys’s ToxTracker chemical assay identifies compounds that damage human health as the basis for animal-free safety testing of products including pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and fine chemicals. The funding will go to geographical expansion in Europe and the US as Toxys drives the development of new assays including an embryotoxicity test. Zeeuws Investment Fund and InnovationQuarter provided Toxys with an undisclosed series A sum in 2016, according to StartupJuncture.
CIIE.Co, the incubation and innovation arm of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, has co-led a $500,000 round for India-based robotic parcel sorting system developer Unbox Robotics together with seed fund Aralia Ventures, the Business Standard reported yesterday. Entrepreneur First and SOSV also took part, as did angel investors Vijay Kedia and Rajesh Sawhney and undisclosed additional investors. Unbox Robotics provides automated parcel sorting machines that are marketed as highly responsive due to their utilisation of swarm intelligence, a hypothesis where groups of animals complete greater feats than can be achieved with each participating individual’s thought-process.
Kalium Health, a UK-based kidney and heart disease diagnostics spinout of University of Cambridge, yesterday closed a seed round of undisclosed size featuring university TTO Cambridge Enterprise and Martlet Capital, the investment arm of aerospace, defence and property group Marshall of Cambridge. The spinout hopes to commercialise an early diagnostics test for kidney disease that works by estimating the level of potassium present in the patient’s blood. Kalium Health intends to invest the seed money in technology and product development with a view to releasing its first device to market within four years.
