Longliv Ventures Announces a $10m Strategic Investment in Sight Diagnostics Ltd
- The consumer digital heath fund, a member of CK Hutchison Holdings Group, invests in ventures at the intersection of healthcare and retail
- Sight Diagnostics is poised to revolutionize primary healthcare by providing instant complete blood count tests at the point-of care
HERZELIYA, Israel, Feb. 28, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Longliv Ventures L.P. ("Longliv Ventures"), the consumer digital health fund, has announced the completion of a US $10 million strategic investment in Sight Diagnostics Ltd, a cutting-edge company that's transforming point-of-care diagnostics. Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sight Diagnostics provides patients with affordable, lab-grade complete blood count (CBC) test results in minutes rather than days by combining advanced image processing with artificial intelligence, analyzing blood samples taken by finger prick rather than by venous blood.
Established in 2018, Longliv Ventures focuses on investments in early stage ventures that seek to address significant health and wellness issues capable of producing global impact. Longliv Ventures is a member of CK Hutchison Holdings Group ("CKHH"). With over 300,000 employees in over 50 countries across the world, CKHH is among the largest companies listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The group has a pivotal role in healthcare through its A.S. Watson Division, the world's largest international health and beauty retailer with over 14,900 stores in 25 markets in Europe and Asia – from Germany, the United Kingdom and Russia to China, Hong Kong, Indonesia and the Philippines. Among its world-renowned brands are Superdrug, Rossmann, Kruidvat and Watsons.
Longliv Ventures led the Sight Diagnostics round of a total of $27.8 million in Series C funding. Other participants in the round include Jack Nicklaus II, a healthcare philanthropist and board member of the Nicklaus Children's Health Care Foundation, Steven Esrick, a healthcare impact investor, and an additional major medical equipment manufacturer, as well as existing investors OurCrowd, Go Capital, and New Alliance Capital.
"Sight's mission is to improve health by providing fast, accurate, and pain-free testing when and where it is needed," said Yossi Pollak, CEO of Sight Diagnostics. "The company will use the funding first and foremost to ramp up the global expansion of OLO, Sight's lab-grade point-of-care blood diagnostics system, and with Longliv Ventures as a strategic investor we look forward to an effective and rapid expansion of our sales."
Following this investment, Dr. Dan Eldar, the Executive Director of Longliv Ventures, will join the Board of directors of Sight.
"Longliv Ventures targets companies that are on a mission to develop and nourish solutions that will augment and eventually revolutionize the way people manage their health and wellness," said Dr. Eldar. "Such solutions could benefit from the CK Hutchison Holdings global footprint which includes the A.S. Watson Group, the world's largest international health and beauty retailer. With a potential reach to 2.4 billion customers and with connection to more than 130 million loyalty members and a world renowned online sales operation, we can provide early stage companies with a stepping stone to global success."
"We believe Sight Diagnostics is set to revolutionize medical processes in many types of clinical settings, as well as to give rise to new services at retail points of care," said David Gordon, Head of Investments of Longliv Ventures. "Longliv Ventures seeks great entrepreneurs who wish to provide significant health benefits to people all over the world, making their lives better and easier."
About Longliv Ventures:
Established in 2018, Longliv Ventures L.P. ("Longliv Ventures") is a consumer oriented digital health fund that focuses on investments in early stage ventures that seek to address significant health and wellness issues capable of producing global impact. Longliv Ventures is a member of CK Hutchison Holdings Group ("CKHH"). With over 300,000 employees in over 50 countries across the world, CKHH is among the largest companies listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The Group has a pivotal role in healthcare through its A.S. Watson Division, the world's largest international Health and Beauty retailer with over 14,900 stores in 25 markets in Europe and Asia – from Germany, the United Kingdom and Russia to China, Hong Kong, Indonesia and the Philippines. Among its world-renowned brands are Superdrug, Rossmann, Kruidvat and Watsons.
With a potential reach to 2.4 billion customers and with connection to more than 130 million loyalty members and a world renowned online sales operation, Longliv Ventures can provide early stage companies with a stepping stone to global success. Examples of domains of interest include point-of-care diagnostics and home testing, chronic condition management, treatment adherence, tele-medicine, pregnancy monitoring and allergen detection.
For more information about Longliv Ventures, please visit http://longliv-ventures.com/.
About Sight Diagnostics
Sight was created to provide patients with access to accurate, convenient and pain-free diagnostic testing that delivers results in minutes instead of days, in order to transform healthcare. To do so, Sight has developed an artificial intelligence-driven platform for blood analysis and infectious disease diagnostics based on its revolutionary methods for 'digitizing' blood. The company's platform was first deployed in 2014 to detect malaria, for which over 600,000 tests have been sold across 25 countries. The company's newest offering, OLO, brings lab-grade Complete Blood Counts (CBCs) to the point-of-care and is now available for purchase in the EU. Sight was founded by a team that includes Harvard-trained biotechnologists, experts in AI, and instrumentation engineers, many of whom hail from the world-renowned IDF technology units.
In the United States, OLO is an investigational system and is not yet available for sale.
For more information on OLO, please visit www.sightdx.com
Contact details:
David Gordon, Head of Investments, Longliv Ventures
davidg@longliv-ventures.com
Emma Baron, VSC for Sight Diagnostics
sight@vscconsulting.com
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