Ascend announces the sale of Grundium Oy to EW Healthcare Partners
Tampere, Finland - Ascend Capital Partners announces the sale of Grundium Oy to EW Healthcare Partners following a carefully managed process executed by financial advisors Bryan, Garnier & Co. to select the optimal acquirers for the firm. The founders and management of Grundium will retain a significant minority stake in the company and remain in leadership positions.
This transaction marks a landmark exit for Ascend Capital Partners and continues its tradition of achieving outstanding returns for investors from its portfolio of investments across Asia and Europe. It also reinforces Ascend’s continuing commitment to Finland and other European countries rich in high tech growth opportunities, as a key part of Ascend’s ambitious European investment plans.
Founded in 2015, Grundium produces revolutionary high-precision, smart, connected and portable digital microscope scanners used in diagnostic pathology, serving a variety of end-users ranging from animal and human healthcare clinics to laboratory service firms. By applying state-of-the-art mobile technology to digital pathology, Grundium’s solutions transform the reach and quality of diagnostic pathology, saving time and cost. This allows scarce pathologist resources to be deployed remotely to multiple locations, making high quality scanning affordable for every local lab and clinic. Grundium scanners are used across all fields of microscopy, including pathology and AI diagnosis.
Following Ascend Capital Partners’ successful exit of IEE SA in Luxembourg in 2016, Ascend went to Finland in search of cutting-edge tech opportunities. Impressed by the potential of Grundium’s technology and management team, Ascend committed early in the life-cycle of the company to become their first and only institutional investor in 2017. Alongside Grundium, Ascend concluded 2017 with three other investments in Finland totalling EUR 24 million.
This exceptional result provides strong validation of the successfulness of Ascend’s hands-on investment approach, closely supporting companies with vast industry resources and knowledge to support early-stage European medtech and mobility companies. This philosophy has been borne out by strong results across the rest of Ascend’s portfolio companies, past and present.
Jerry Hong, CEO of Ascend Capital Partners, said: “We appreciate the tremendous results achieved by the Grundium management and their team. We are excited to see the partnership between EW Healthcare and Grundium blossom into further success. Ascend will continue to offer their support to Grundium should further opportunities arise in the future, and we wish them the very best for this exciting next phase of development. Our success with Grundium is a significant milestone for Ascend’s thesis of investing in medtech and mobility companies, one we will continue in order to support our current and future portfolio companies. We are therefore confident in the potential for our hands-on investment style to continue to deliver stellar outcomes across Europe, allowing us to closely partner with our portfolio companies to achieve success. Please watch this space as we continue to ramp up our investments into European early-stage tech!”
About Ascend Capital Partners
Ascend Capital Partners is a leading international venture capital and financial advisory firm committed to working with innovative companies who have potential to grow and expand internationally, particularly in Europe, Asia, and the United States. With extensive regional and international networks, and insight into Chinese and Western capital market worlds, Ascend has set itself apart from other pure advisory firms and pure private equity funds.
About Grundium
A global leader in advanced imaging technology, Grundium makes digital pathology and high-quality professional diagnosis available for all life – whether human, animal, plant or other. This is achieved by doing something that nobody else can: applying state-of-the-art mobile technology in microscopy. Established in 2015 by ex-Nokia engineers, the Tampere-based company is democratizing digital pathology with the Ocus® range of microscope scanners. Their cutting-edge imaging solutions are based on over 20 years of experience in optics, sensors and beautiful high-precision devices. Grundium serves various industries and businesses enhancing quality and processes, protecting human life and safeguarding a clean environment.
About EW Healthcare Partners
With close to $4 billion raised since inception, EW Healthcare Partners is one of the largest and oldest private healthcare investment firms and seeks to make growth equity investments in fast growing commercial-stage healthcare companies in the pharmaceutical, medical device, diagnostics, and technology-enabled services sectors in the United States and in Europe. Since its founding in 1985, EW Healthcare Partners has maintained its singular commitment to the healthcare industry and has been a long-term investor in over 150 healthcare companies, ranging across sectors, stages and geographies. The team is comprised of over 20 senior investment professionals with offices in New York, Houston and London.
For more information please contact:
Jerry Hong jerry@ascend-cp.com
David Oliver david@ascend-cp.com
Elaine Mo elaine@ascend-cp.com
Colin Powrie colin@ascend-cp.com