Asabys has today announced the entry of the Institut Català de Finances (ICF) into its new venture capital fund, Sabadell Asabys Health Innovation Investments II (Sabadell Asabys II), with a stake of 10 million euros. The ICF is the public financial institution of Catalonia, dedicated to promoting and facilitating access to financing for the Catalan business fabric, contributing to the growth of the Catalan economy, generating value for society and acting as a complement to the financial sector private.

With this investment, the ICF, which already invested in Asabys' first fund in 2019, confirms its interest in medical technology and biopharmaceutical companies, and the need to value medical research and technology transfer. One of the entity's main lines of action in the area of ​​risk capital is investment in funds managed by independent managers that invest in Catalan companies in the health sciences.

Since the launch of Sabadell Asabys II at the beginning of the year, the manager has already made three investments, two based in Barcelona, ​​DeepUll and OrikineBio, and one in Paris, Gradient Denervation Technologies. Asabys has led the Seed, Series A and B financing rounds of these companies together with leading venture capital managers in Europe such as Sofinnova Partners, Kurma Partners, Thuja Capital and Adbio, as well as the investment arm of corporates such as Werfen and BioMerieux.

In recent years, Catalonia, and Barcelona in particular, has positioned itself as an important medical hub in Europe, where health startups raised 445 million euros by 2022, which represents an increase of 87% with respect to the year 2021. This September, Barcelona hosts for the first time two of the most relevant health conferences at a global level, with Asabys as the main sponsor, LSI Europe 23, one of the world's leading technological health conferences, where they attend top level investors, founders and executives, and Biospain, one of the largest international biotechnology events in southern Europe.

Irene Bertran, Director of Venture Capital at the ICF, states: "Asabys' investment policy in the biotech ecosystem links with the ICF's mission to support and value medical research and technology transfer in health and science in Catalonia, especially in very early stages of development. The interest of our public promotion bank is that this ecosystem grows, is more solid and positions the country as a first-class medical hub.”

Joseph Ll. Sanfeliu, Founding & Managing Partner of Asabys, adds: "The support of the ICF in this new fund is not only a support for our work as investors since we started in 2018, but above all a reflection of the enormous ecosystem potential in biotech, medical technology, diagnostics and digital health solutions; multi-segment that defines the distinctive strategy of Asabys as an investment firm.”