Swiss imaging software boosts lab productivity
Semasopht, a spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is on its way to securing seed capital as the Basel-based Erfindungs Verwertung AG (EVA) takes on the young company as a new project.
Semasopht says the deal with EVA, which is funded by two Basel banks and a number of private investors, gives it breathing room and takes it one step closer to raising the SFr 1.5 million funding it will require to commercialize its software, used for analysis in research laboratories.
“The capital will be used to strengthen our distribution channels,” Dr Pascal Vallotton, founder of Semasopht, told Swiss Venture.
Semasopht’s technology enables the extracting of quantitative information based on time-lapse image sequences. According to Vallotton, the tool is a real productivity booster in research labs. It can reduce “years of manual tracking labor to a few seconds”, he said. Typically it will be used for biological imaging, drug discovery, diagnostics, nanotechnology, and microfluidics engineering research.
Semasopht was recently awarded the Swiss CTI “startup label” where it will benefit from business coaching and networking events. It also received third prize in the “Prix Lausanne Région Entreprendre 2004”.
EVA is a company whose business model relies on taking equity stakes in very early stage companies and then divesting them via either a sale of the shares to venture capital investors or via a liquidity event for the startup company, such as an IPO or a trade sale. It has ten companies in its portfolio.
by Valerie Thompson
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