Helion provides Series A round for India’s Lifecell
Helion Venture Partners has committed INR350 million ($6.5 million) to a Series A round of funding for LifeCell International, India’s first and largest stem cell banking company. The capital will be used to expand LifeCell’s domestic presence and support further stem cell research.
"Currently, India is the largest birthing country in the world with over 27 million births every year but in terms of storing baby stem cells it is one of the lowest at two per thousand compared to 50 per thousand in the US and 250 per thousand in Singapore," Mayur Abhaya, LifeCell's CEO, told The Times of India.
The company is also looking for opportunities to collaborative with innovators globally on licensing arrangements. It has close to 50,000 clients and expects to post revenues of INR1 billion for the current fiscal year.
LifeCell was founded in 2004 with cryogenic preservation of umbilical cord blood stem cells at its facility in Chennai. The company already has a technical collaboration and exclusive license agreement with Cryo-Cell International, the world's largest stem cell bank.
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