China VC Weekly: Robotics, Biotech and ByteDance’s Indian Sweetheart
The venture capital landscape has been looking rather bleak for the past several weeks with COVID-19 taking a heavy toll on the industry. In the most exciting news, robotics startup Jianjia Robot revealed an investment from Baidu Ventures completed at the beginning of the year; Hangzhou-based biotech firm New Horizon Health raises $20 million in its Series D round; and ByteDance invests in Indian news aggregator DailyHunt.
Baidu Ventures lead the Series A round of financing of orthopedic robot maker Jianjia Robot
Orthopedics robot R&D company Jianjia Robot completed a Series-A round of financing at the beginning of the year worth tens of millions of yuan. The lead investor is Baidu Ventures, with HaoYue Capital serving as the exclusive financial advisor for this round of financing. The funds will be used to advance the clinical trials of the company’s first joint replacement surgery robot “ARTHROBOT.”
Xu Jing, founder of Jianjia Robot, said in the future, Jianjia will accelerate clinical trials and R&D processes of orthopedic surgical robots, and strive to create an intelligent helper for orthopedic surgeons.
About Jianjia Robot
Founded in 2018, Jianjia Robot focuses on providing accurate joint replacement solutions for the market, covering the entire process from the pre-operation stage to the post-operation stage.
Biotech firm New Horizon Health raises $20 million in a Series D round
Hangzhou-based biotech company New Horizon Health has completed a $20 million Series D financing, led by Omniscience Capital, the US medical health fund Exome Asset Management. Old shareholders Qiming Venture Partners, Softbank China and Duke Management Company followed.
Zhu Yeqing, co-founder and CEO of New Horizon Health, said the proceeds of this round will be used for the development of new product pipelines, large-scale clinical research, service system upgrades and brand building.
About New Horizon Health
Founded in 2013, New Horizon Health is one of the first biotech enterprises in China that focuses on early cancer screening and the first to propose a home testing service. The company is headquartered in Binjiang District, Hangzhou, and operates medical laboratories in Beijing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou. At present, it has launched home screening products for bowel cancer, cervical cancer, gastric cancer and lung cancer, serving more than 4 million customers.
ByteDance invests in Indian news aggregator DailyHunt
According to DealStreetAsia, Bangalore-based news aggregator Dailyhunt has raised $23.5 million from ByteDance, Goldman Sachs, Falcon Edge and Advent Management.
The new financing round came after months of discussions with multiple investors, according to Inc42. It was previously rumored that the company was negotiating an investment of $100 million with SoftBank.
Dailyhunt was established in 2007 to provide users with real-time, personalized news content organized through machine learning and deep learning. It is reported that the company currently has more than 252 million monthly active users and 51 million daily active users.
About DailyHunt
DailyHunt was launched in 2009 by ex-Nokia employees Umesh Kulkarni and Chandrashekhar Sohoni who previously launched the online news aggregator platform NewsHunt, which was acquired by Verse in 2012. In 2015, NewsHunt was rebranded as DailyHunt.
