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Follow UsBANGALORE, INDIA: IDG Ventures India, a $150 Million early-stage technology venture capital fund and Erasmic Venture Fund has announced an investment of $3.5 million in Perfint, a Chennai/Mysore based healthcare devices start-up.
Perfint has been co-founded by S. Nandakumar, B D Vijaya and a team of healthcare device professionals that were closely associated with building GE Healthcare's Design, Manufacturing and Sourcing hub in India.
Perfint will focus on developing Niche Healthcare Products and Solutions, that address Clinical Productivity needs globally with a special focus on Emerging Markets like India, China , amongst others and subsequently developed markets like USA, Europe etc. Their first product called PIGA, is a Tool Positioner for Image Guided Minimally Invasive (IG-MI) procedures. Some of the clinical applications that PIGA supports would be, Fine needle aspiration (F NA), Biopsy and RF Ablation (RFA) of small tumors in the lung and the abdomen. PIGA, to be launched in India in early '08, would be amongst the earliest positioning devices available globally, for such soft tissue procedures. PIGA is under clinical evaluation at this moment.
"IDG Ventures is very happy to be associated with the ex GE team led by Nandakumar and B D Vijaya, more so since I have known them from my Wipro days. Given the expertise of the team and the disruptive nature of the products, Perfint is well placed to be a leader in this domain. This is the first of our many Life Sciences Engineering investments in India" said Sudhir Sethi, Chairman & Managing Director, IDG Ventures India.
Image guided interventions can be broadly categorized as IG (Image Guided) diagnosis (like biopsy), IG therapy (like radiation) and IG Surgery. The global market for minimally invasive image-guided interventions is currently over $3 billion, though, for example, currently only less than 15 percent of all surgeries are performed using IG-MI approach.
"With increasing healthcare awareness and ever improving hospital infrastructure across the world, guided procedures for early stage cancer diagnosis, drug delivery etc, are estimated to grow from under 10-15% of total procedures done today to about 50-60 percent by 2010. That presents a huge opportunity for devices such as PIGA" added Sudhir Sethi.
"Perfint works closely with healthcare professionals to co-create niche devices that are Intelligent, Connected and Affordable while meeting global standards in safety and reliability. Our product development professionals are passionate about creating world-class products. We will deploy the funds raised from IDG and Erasmic to accelerate our New Product programs .We will start with emerging markets and look at entering the US markets in 2009. Our investors' global network will be of great help as we build world-class clinical and technology advisory panels" said S. Nandakumar, co-founder and CEO of Perfint.
"Perfint's products and Solutions would change the Medical instrumentation world in three ways – They would enhance the utility of existing devices like CT, Enable a shift towards minimally intrusive procedures and Lower the cost of ownership for emerging and developed markets alike" said Subrata Mitra, General Partner, Erasmic Venture Fund.
Sudhir Sethi and Ranjith Menon will join the Board of Directors at Perfint representing IDG Ventures India. Sudhir Sethi has over 25 years of operating, investment and Board experience and is credited with seed funding Mindtree Consulting and more recently ConnectM. Ranjith Menon focuses on engineering services as Investment Advisor at IDG Ventures India and has prior experience in design and manufacturing domain. Subrata Mitra will join on the board from Erasmic. Mitra, co-founded Erasmic Consulting to work with, mentor & invest their personal time & capital into early stage US/India cross-border companies. Subrata was the Chairman of Small-device now a part of Digital Chocolate .He's also on the board of Mu Sigma, a statistical modeling and Analytics company.