Venture capital fund Norwest Venture Partners, Accel Partners and IDG Ventures have invested $7.2 million in Chennai-based medical technology company, Perfint Healthcare. While a large share of the investment has come from the $3.7-billion Norwest, this is the second round of funding for both IDG and Accel. They had invested $3.5 million in Perfint four years ago, when it was just a startup.
Perfint, an emerging company in the interventional oncology space, is the maker of PIGA CT, an image-guided minimal invasive diagnostic equipment. The equipment assists biopsy, drug delivery and ablation of small tumours. Perfint has made 40 installations within a year of its launch in healthcare institutions, including All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Jaslok Hospital, Mumbai, and Sri Ramachandra Medical College in Chennai. With the second round of funding, the company will scale up its operations by launching the product in West Asia, southeast Asia, eastern Europe and Latin America this year, said S Nandakumar, CEO of Perfint.
Perfint’s second product, an image-guided therapy platform in oncology, is in the early stages of trial. It will conduct trials and launch this equipment simultaneously in India, Europe and South Asia.
It will also seek regulatory approvals such as USFDA and SFDA to launch both the products in the US and China. “This is our first investment in healthcare and we find this sector quite promising. In India, we have already invested $1.2 billion,” said Mohan Kumar, partner at Norwest.
Norwest expects to exit Perfint in three to five years, by when the company revenue should grow to $50-100 million, he said.
Source: My Digital FC