Singapore medtech startup Curiox bags $15m, plans IPO

Singapore-based medtech firm Curiox Biosystems has raised US$15 million in funding from Korean biotech investors.

The deal is backed by KB Investment, IMM Investment, Quad Investment, HB Investment, Dayli Investment, and SV Investment.

Curiox’s Laminar Wash MINI System / Photo credit: Curiox

Curiox is a spinoff company from the Agency for Science, Technology, and Research under the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Singapore. It develops bio instrumentation solutions for use in cell analysis and therapy in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.

The company now plans to use the investment to scale up and accelerate its commercialization activities globally. It said it has successfully penetrated markets in the US, China, Korea, and Europe.

The new funds will also help Curiox expand its “global reach to the flow cytometry community and other cell-based assay developers,” said CEO Namyong Kim.

The company is also looking to pursue an initial public offering in Korea in the next 36 months.

Zig Ventures, which has backed Curiox since 2011, said it supported the medtech company in its latest funding round. Zig is Seeds Capital’s co-investment partner under the Startup SG Equity program. It has been working with Enterprise Singapore to connect medtech companies like Curiox to their networks to help speed up their commercialization process.

Startup SG Equity was established in 2017 by the government of Singapore to showcase the city-state’s startup ecosystem both locally and overseas. With the program, the government co-invests with independent, qualified third-party investors into eligible startups. Seeds Capital and SGInnovate were appointed to manage the funds under the program.

In April 2019, SGInnovate named new co-investors to focus on deep-tech startups in fields like AI and medtech. The five new partners join the agency’s 17 co-investors announced in December 2017.