Rainbow Medical will open an office in Shanghai to help facilitate strategic deals as part of a $25 million cash infusion from investors in China. The firm is an Israeli-based seed investor and incubator specifically for medical device and medical technology startups.
The new investors are in good company; in recent years Medtronic ($MDT), Abbott Laboratories ($ABT), the Sorin Group and Sony ($SNE) have all put money into Rainbow Medical.
 |
| Efi Cohen-Arazi |
"We opened the office in Shanghai to capitalize on China's fast-growing market for our products and to foster collaborations with Chinese medical device companies," Efi Cohen-Arazi, co-founder and CEO of Rainbow Medical, said in a statement. "There is a strong demand in the fast-growing Chinese healthcare industry for Rainbow Medical's breakthrough technologies."
Investors in the latest fundraising include China's largest private insurance holding company Ping An, investment and financial management company YongJin, the Chinese telecommunications company ZTE and undisclosed Chinese venture capital funds.
Rainbow Medical will invest the new funds into seeding new startups based upon the intellectual property that it holds, as well as to fund its existing portfolio companies.
The firm was founded in 2003 by GlenRock Israel, a private equity group specializing in technology and the life sciences owned by Israeli businessman Leon Recanati. It was co-founded by medical device entrepreneur Yossi Gross and Cohen-Arazi.
Rainbow Medical has a portfolio of 12 medical device startups that address a range of chronic indications such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, blindness, uterine fibroids and chronic neuropathic pain.
Its portfolio companies include ultra-small artificial retina maker Nano Retina, minimally invasive aortic neurostimulator provider Enopace Biomedical, minimally invasive wireless neurostimulation implant startup BlueWind Medical, implantable continuous glucose sensor company GluSense and stentlike hypertension device player Vascular Dynamics.
In January, Vascular Dynamics secured the first $8.4 million tranche of a $16.8 million Series B round to advance its U.S. and European clinical trial program for its resistant hypertension treatment device. The financing was led by HBM Healthcare Investments, joined by existing investors Rainbow Medical, the MedFocus Funds and an undisclosed existing investor with more than $1 billion in assets under management.
- here is the release