Asia
InterCure Raises $3 Million in First Closing of Series C Round
By Tokyo, Japan, Fort Lee, NJ and Lod, Israel
Apr 13, 2005, 11:11

InterCure, Ltd., a consumer medical device company pioneering the breathing-based treatment of cardiovascular diseases, today announced that it has raised $3 million in a first closing of series C round of fundraising. The round was led by Nikko antfatory, the venture capital arm of Nikko Cordial Securities (TSE: 8603), Japan's third largest investment bank with shareholders equity of approximately $7 billion, together with Nippon Venture Capital (NVCC), one of Japan's leading VC firms. Existing investors participating in the financing were Medica Venture Partners, Yaacov Shachar, Dr. Arie Ovadia and Dr. Benjamin Gavish, one of the company's two founders. Additional existing investors include New York based True-North-Palladin Partners, United Mizrahi Bank and Mr. Daniel Plotkin, the company's Chairman. InterCure intends this round to be its final private financing round, and is anticipating an Initial Public Offering by the end of next year.

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InterCure, Ltd.

FIRMS

InterCure is a medical device company that creates and sells products that harness the therapeutic power of breathing for the treatment of hypertension, heart failure, respiratory diseases and other conditions.

Nikko antfactory K.K. was founded in October 2000 as the private equity arm of Nikko Cordial Group's merchant banking division. In 2003, Nikko antfactory merged with Nikko Capital Co., Ltd., the venture capital subsidiary of Nikko Cordial Group. Nikko antfactory invests in both buy-out private equity and venture capital opportunities providing management, business development and financial advisory support to its portfolio companies. The company manages 17 venture capital funds, 3 private equity funds, and 1 secondary fund with an investment asset of approximately 90 billion yen as of April 2005.

Nippon Venture Capital is a pure venture capital firm with over $450 million in financial backing from respective industry leaders such as Ushio Inc, Secom Co, Orix Corporation, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking, Omron Corporation, NTT, Sanyo Electric, Fujitsu Ltd, Sumitomo Electric, IBM Japan, and Nippon Life Insurance. NVCC is well positioned to incubate highly innovative business of portfolios, strongly supported by above Japanese business leaders, and eventually over half of investments are in early-stage companies.