Climate Change, COVID 19 & How do we Build Back Better?

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July 2020    |    View this email in your browser Climate Change, COVID 19 & How do we Build Back Better? Over the last 4 months, COVID-19 lockdowns around the world have dramatically cut climate change emissions. Daily carbon emissions plunged 17% by early April compared with 2019 levels, according to the first definitive study of global carbon output this year. The findings show the world has experienced the sharpest drop in carbon output since records began, with large sections of the global economy brought to a near standstill. When the lockdown was at its most stringent, in some countries emissions fell by just over a quarter (26%) on average. In the UK, the decline was about 31%, while in Australia emissions fell 28.3% for a period during April.   Our desire to stay safe has also been instrumental in some dramatic mass behaviour changes. Before the crisis, we accepted the dominance of traffic noise as an inevitable consequence of city living. We raced from one thing to the next, assuming that it was impossible to reduce the level of our local and international travel. We were too busy to take stock of our consumption and often had a poor awareness of our unnecessary waste. Now, we have sampled a much more tranquil urban ambience. We have had imposed travel restrictions - and often managed to still work effectively and socialise, albeit remotely. We had a moment to take stock, and to focus on what’s truly important.  Numerous studies - like the graph below - have shown that the vast majority of us now believe that climate change is as serious as coronavirus. It is clear that Future Planet's long held position is becoming increasingly mainstream.  The significant disruption in our routines caused by the pandemic may present an opportunity for us to move to a more sustainable lifestyle. Indeed, what opportunities has this crisis revealed for how we can reduce congestion and pollution, and make our cities healthier and more sustainable for the future? Our Advisory Board Member, founder of ZipCar and urban transportation visionary, Robin Chase, recently discussed these very issues with the Boston Globe's Editorial Page Editor, Bina Venkataraman. Watch the full discussion here.   However as good as our intentions as individuals, it will take determined moves by businesses, industry, national and local government to modify the environment to ensure that we can build on these behavioural and attitude changes.  There are initial positive signs. We were delighted to learn about an initiative launched by Richard Curtis and ex-Bank of England governor Mark Carney, the Make My Money Matter campaign, which wants the £3trillion in UK retirement pots used to take on climate change. It is also encouraging that there is a significant movement among some business leaders and policy makers to “build back better” from the pandemic in a way that confronts the climate crisis (watch to the FT's Moral Money discussion below).  This newsletter considers some of the emerging theme and trends as we work to solidify the progress that has been made - and ensure that some light emerges from the COVID-19 darkness.    Watch FT's Moral Money - Responsible Business in the Age of COVID-19  Climate Change & COVID-19: Emerging Trends and Opportunities    1. What is important?: Over the last four months we have faced the greatest health crisis of a generation. We have lived through an experience that was previously unimaginable. It has caused many of us to reassess our priorities, consider core values and clarified what's really important - for many this means prioritising humanity and protecting the environment 2. Benefits of nature: Significant numbers of us have been enjoying and having a renewed appreciation for nature. A large-scale study found a positive correlation between exposure to the natural world and pro-environmental behaviours. Google Trends also shows that during worldwide lockdowns online searches for “bird sounds”, “identify trees”, and “growing plants” reached double what they were a year ago  3. Steep reduction in long distance travel: National and international lockdowns have curtailed the vast majority of long-distance travel. As a consequence, there has been a massive reduction in traffic on the roads as well as in air transport (e.g. the number of European daily flights in March and April decreased by approximately 90% compared to last year). Our reduction in movement has led to the biggest carbon crash ever recorded  4. Changing the way we travel: UK cycle-to-work schemes are up 200% in the number of bicycle orders, with car use roughly 40% less than what it was in mid-February. Mass transit is not an attractive option right now so there is a search for other sustainable alternatives to avoid people returning to their cars. For example, Paris is rolling out 650km of "corona cycle-ways" and Milan has introduced a programme to prioritise pedestrians and cyclists 5. Greater awareness of consumption: As we have been spending a much greater amount of time at home, we can see for the first time how much energy we are using or how much food is being thrown away. This will hopefully encourage us to stop, think and ultimately change our behaviour.    Challenge Investing Within our universe, we have a significant number of companies that are helping to profitably address this global challenge. If you’d like to invest in some of the most promising growth companies based on top research then please don't hesitate to get in touch. This comes with very best wishes from everyone at Future Planet Capital.    Want to know more? Contact Ed Phillips or Abi Wye at Future Planet Capital.    This monthly digest is brought to you by Future Planet Capital.  Copyright © 2020 Future Planet Capital, All rights reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

Founders Interview: Douglas Hansen-Luke

This week, we are interviewing Future Planet’s founder and Executive Chairman, Douglas Hansen-Luke. After a long career in Asset Management in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Africa, Douglas founded Future Planet Capital to meet an unmet need in the market: impact and innovation at scale. We asked him what drove him to start Future Planet, successes to date, and what the future holds.

1. What prompted you to found Future Planet Capital?

Future Planet Capital was founded in 2016 to enable sovereign funds and other large investors to access the innovation coming out of the best universities in the world. Ventures created at the top universities make up a tremendous amount of today’s global economy.  The standout examples, of course, are Facebook emerging from Harvard and Google being founded by Stanford grad students. The idea for FPC stemmed from a desire to systematise this process and when we saw a small deal in 2014 between a sovereign wealth fund and Trinity College Dublin, I believed I could do that better!

Future Planet grew out of a desire to  build a fund that makes a difference. I wanted to dedicate all my energies to this and leverage my experience with institutional investors to make an impact and a profit.

After conducting in-depth research into whether this was going to be a viable business option, we concluded that there was an unfilled need in the market. Hence, we developed partnerships with the university managers based around the word’s most prolific centres of innovation: Berkeley, Cambridge, Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Tsinghua and the University California System.  We then took these partnerships and connected the brightest people to the world’s most prominent investors; the rest was history.

“Future Planet grew out of a desire to build a fund that makes a difference. I wanted to dedicate all my energies to this and leverage my experience with institutional investors to make an impact and a profit.”

2. When did you first start seeing success with the fund?

We started this the fund in a research-based manner and subsequently surveyed twenty sovereign wealth and pension funds, asking these funds to detail what they want to do with their money. We did this because one of the goals of the fund is to be a good manager of people’s money. Hence, a logical step to managing their money well is to understand where they want it invested. 

As a result, we attained early success. In our first eighteen months, the fund managed to deploy one hundred million dollars in assets, twenty million for British Local Government Pensions, thirty million sub-advisories for the British Innovation Fund. Fifty million of co-investment from a Sovereign Fund in the Middle East and from one of the world’s largest technology companies.

The initial success was most definitely there. However, success had to be measured on the results of our investments. Three years later, following the initial ten investments made by our fund, we have nine companies still operating and growing and one unicorn. While there was one failure as the company is no longer trading today. We look upon this as a success; the venture industry is high-risk with up to forty per cent of endeavours failing. Our ninety per cent success rate is something we are incredibly proud to have managed. This is absolutely a testament to the innovation arising out of top universities and our investing strategy

On top of our initial successes, we have looked to expand the stream of investments coming into our Fund and portfolio companies.   Future Planet has a partnership with Barclay’s Private Bank that allows ultra-high net worth individuals to co-invest with us and likewise with Global Corporate Venturing for business investors and with Seedrs for individuals.  This last is very important to us.  Venture Capital investing has long been the preserve of the richest among us.  Through an online investment opportunity, we are trying to democratise the industry, offering individuals a chance to invest with far smaller amounts of money in a venture that would have previously been financially unattainable.

3. Future Planet has existed for four years, what have you learnt about the industry at this time?

There are three things that I have learned in the time since starting Future Planet. The first point we recognised early in the process, and this has been backed up by research conducted throughout the four years. We saw there would be an opportunity to arbitrage value, in the centres of innovation, for example, venture companies in Shenzhen and San Francisco are highly valued with those on the Amtrak corridor in the US being slightly cheaper and those in the UK cheaper still. The valuations of companies differ not because of the quality of their product but rather their local market size for both customers and investors. As a result, these companies are subject to the supply and demand of their local area, thus changing their value depending on where they are founded. We at Future Planet research the quality of the company and compared this to international competitors. We would invest in companies with potential and help these them to grow into more significant markets. We have had success with this model taking UK companies such as Congenica, Navenio and Oxford Flow and introducing them to the Middle and the Far East.

The second lesson we learnt while developing the fund is that the biggest brand investors, the Silicon Valley venture giants, are followed by the herd.  These firms have access to the best founders in centres of innovation and then often sell out at later stages to those who don’t have that access.  We invest at the same time as these investors and from the same pool of opportunity – the universities and their eco-systems. 

The third lesson follows on from the other, early-stage investment is abundant. Every Government and fund want people to become innovators. The most inefficient part of the market is stage B and C as it is not as flashy; this growth stage, however, is vital company growth. At the earliest angel, seed and Series A stages the technology and commercial opportunity have yet to be proved.  By the time they’re at Series B the technology is usually ready and they are on the cusp of commercial traction and are in a position where our network will be able to help them with the next round of growth.

 4. What advice would you give to someone wanting to start an impact fund today?

 The first and second generation of impact funds focused mostly on the developing world and real estate in the developed world, such as social housing projects and infrastructure. My view is that the biggest challenges facing the world are far more focused on technology; it is this combined with government policy that is going to make a genuine difference. Climate change is going to impact billions of people. It is a technology that may be able to turn the tide. It is technology medicine that will make a difference in people’s health outcomes once again; this can have an impact on a large portion of the world’s population. Unless you are healthy, it is very challenging for you to do anything else. Once the health is sorted, we can then look at education. Education technology is making learning far more accessible to people, particularly in the K1-K12 age group. 

I believe that the impact and innovation move together. There is not enough money focused on connecting these two things; individually, they are both quite niche. But, put these together there are substantial addressable markets. When we view our deals, based on the sustainable development goals, there is often a total addressable market of over one trillion dollars or challenges and solutions that will make things better for over 1 billion lives. COVID or climate change, for example, has undoubtedly changed the lives of all seven billion of us.  We could even look at the human error behind car crashes which cause over a million deaths.  The vast majority of these would be avoided with autonomous vehicles.  We are operating in a unique space and find that very few people are working on the same type of ventures. We encourage new entrants into this area as there is more than enough room to support more than one fund manager. Knowing one’s eco-system can bring particularly strong results, so we are particularly open to local partnerships in Canada, China and India.

5. Where do you see Future Planet and yourself in five years?

 Future Planet is one of the most exciting and fulfilling things I have done in my professional career. There is a very significant impact and profit opportunity, and I would be disappointed if, in five years, Future Planet was not managing at least five hundred million dollars of assets. Much more than that I want us to have had first look at the next Google or Facebook but as companies that make a real difference to climate change, education, health, security or sustainable growth. We are already invested in companies that are creating vaccines for some of the world’s most challenging diseases. We want to continue investing in companies that are changing the world. For myself, this would be adequate fulfilment of a life’s work. 

I can’t imagine not being involved in Future Planet but over time our team will grow and talent needs time and space to breathe.  To allow that in years to come, I plan to be fully supportive of the internal network and external early-stage investment partners we have built so far. Then I would love to use the experience gained bringing academia and private capital together to do the same with private finance, technology and the world of public policy where much work remains to be done.

Future Planet For All

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June 2020    |    View this email in your browser Future Planet For All At Future Planet we are outraged at the violence, brutality and unequal treatment experienced by black communities in America. But, we also acknowledge that unfortunately these acts of racism aren’t new and they take place around the world.  We stand in solidarity with all those affected by this issue. Inequality is a global challenge, without addressing it sustainable growth cannot not be achieved.   The events in America, and the attention they have received all around the world, mean this is a time that united action can make a real difference.  We are joining with investment colleagues from around the world to commit to a more inclusive technology industry and to ensure equality of opportunity for underrepresented groups. We are starting with a small step, actively broadening our search for top applicants and investments from all parts of our community.  Whether in recruiting, or investing, we want to champion ability and experience of all different kinds. We want to encourage diversity within our own ranks and the funds and founders we invest with. FPC’s core thesis is profit with purpose - harnessing the power, resources and talent of everyone regardless of background, colour or creed to create a better Future Planet for all.  We are pleased to use this newsletter to highlight three companies working on tackling inequality.     Changing the world: Tackling Inequality  1. Blavity: a tech company for forward thinking Black millennials pushing the boundaries of culture and the status quo. The company's vision is to economically and creatively support Black millennials across the African diaspora, so they can pursue the work they love, and change the world in the process. 2. LandIt: A one-size-fits-one career pathing platform, Landit increases the success of women and diverse groups in the workplace, and enables companies to attract, develop, and retain high-potential diverse talent. Founded by Lisa Skeete Tatum and Sheila Marcelo, backed by NEA and Xfund.  3. RaiseMe: Equal access to higher education has become one of the greatest issues of our time. At RaiseMe, the company are expanding access so that every student, especially among low income and first generation students, has a shot at the American Dream. RaiseMe enables students to earn scholarships throughout high school, starting as early as 9th grade, for doing all the things that best prepare them to succeed.   Challenge Investing The fight against inequality is incredibly important. Within our universe we have a significant number of companies that are helping to profitably address this global challenge. If you’d like to invest in some of the most promising growth companies based on top research then please don't hesitate to get in touch. This comes with very best wishes from everyone at Future Planet Capital.    Want to know more? Contact Ed Phillips or Abi Wye at Future Planet Capital.    This monthly digest is brought to you by Future Planet Capital.  Copyright © 2020 Future Planet Capital, All rights reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

Future Thinking: COVID Challenge

“At Future Planet we are committed to doing our bit to support the national and international effort to tackle the unfolding coronavirus global health emergency. The FPC network has come together with not just companies which could make a difference, but also academics and suppliers. We are pleased to be supporting Imperial College's NHS Trust Study and Oxford University's Study with Effective Giving. And we are participating and have partnered with MIT Solve on their COVID-19 Challenge.“

Read this month’s Future Thinking now — Future Thinking: COVID Challange

Future Thinking: Education

"Quality education for all creates resilient and self-sustaining populations. The truth is, at present, 55% of the world’s children and adolescents lack minimum proficiency in reading and mathematics, and in Africa and South Asia it's over 80%. For women the picture is even worse. Of the 750 million adults who lack basic literacy, two-thirds are female"

— This month we talked all things education. Check out Future Thinking: Education.

Future Thinking: Global Pandemics

“Dealing with the risk of infectious diseases most decidedly ranks within the global challenges that Future Planet addresses when it makes investments. And, as with so many of our challenges, it concerns more than one challenge area - viruses are not only a health, but a security challenge.”

Check-out the latest issue of our “Future Thinking” Newsletter on Global Pandemics this month.

https://mailchi.mp/5c6896d0fd96/future-thinking-march-4817518?e=[UNIQID]

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Future Thinking: Climate Change

Check-out the latest issue of our “Future Thinking” Newsletter on Climate Change this month. Don’t forget to subscribe.

Five More Game Changing Companies

Congratulations to Bibliotech, winner of the 2019 Future Planet Awards!

The Spotify of textbooks, Dave Sherwood and the team at Bibliotech are enabling affordable and equal access to learning resources in the $65BN educational content market.

Having signed partnerships with every major publisher, Bibliotech just raised $4MM USD to expand their operations.

“Students want their educational content online, personalised and aggregated, just like their news, their music and their TV. Bibliotech can provide that for textbooks and more, and I think that is what investors are responding to.”

Dave Sherwood (CEO) Bibliotech

Thanks to our illustrious judging panel:

• Ling Ge (Tencent)

• Richard J Dilworth MVO (Foster Foundation)

• Patrick S. Chung (Xfund)

• Amanda Feldman (Impact Management Project)

And all our category our winners:

• Security: what3words

• Climate Change: First Light Fusion

• Sustainable Growth: Tropic Biosciences

• Health: Neurovalens

• Education: Bibliotech

With a special thanks to James Mawson and Tim Lafferty at Global Corporate Venturing for hosting the Third Annual FPA at the GCV Symposium.

Tie-up between Google and JD.com

In the business world, especially in technology, fascinating alliances are forming. Witness the tie-up announced Monday by Google and JD.com, the No. 2 Chinese e-commerce player. U.S. media predictably played the move as a bid by Google, which invested $550 million in NYSE-listed JD, to inch its way into a China market that has blocked it for nearly a decade. JD will join Google’s shopping platform, and Google will have done a solid for a Chinese company, presumably pleasing Beijing.

But look closer, and the deal speaks volumes to important alliances. JD’s major corporate shareholders include Tencent, which counts JD as an extension of its retail-technology strategy, and Walmart. The U.S. retailer, in turn, has been noodling on alliances with Google for the better part of a year.

The alliances at play are worthy of a 21st century Bismarck of global commerce. Google and Walmart are allied against the arch-foe of Western businesses everywhere, Amazon. Tencent and JD are allied against China’s dominant e-commerce player, Alibaba.

Could Google, prevented from selling ads in China, view Tencent as its entrée into the Chinese search market? Tencent operated a search engine for years but sold it to Sogou, a small competitor to Chinese search leader Baidu. Does this create an opening for Google?

It’s a tangled web. And an interesting one too—especially given the state of the political world, including the tenuous conditions of U.S.-China relations.

FPA Winner: An Interview with Pandia Health

(L-R) Tal Badt, Director of Business Development, Tsinghua x-lab, Patrick Chung, Founding Partner, Xfund, Lord Norman Foster, President, Norman Foster Foundation, Sophia Yen, CEO & Co-Founder Pandia Health, Douglas Hansen-Luke, Executive Chairman and Founder of Future Planet Capital and Lilly Bussman, Principal, Oxford Sciences Innovation.

Sophia Yen, CEO & Co-Founder of  Pandia Health - Special Category Winner

Future Planet Capital is the world's first global innovation investment platform. Through a unique series of relationships and partnerships with top-tier university funds in Asia, Europe and the US, the firm possesses an unrivalled level of access to technology and life science companies from academic institutions and the "clusters of innovation" that surround them. The Future Planet Awards raises the profile of new and growing firms that will profitably impact global challenges. In partnership with Global University Venturing, The Future Planet Awards provide a platform for growth companies to engage with leaders and influencers.

Sophia Yen, MD, MPH, is the Founder and CEO of Pandia Health, the world's only female founded birth control delivery service, which offers care, convenience and confidentiality. Pandia Health offers the easiest way to receive birth control with free delivery, online prescriptions and automatic refills. As the winner of the UC Entrepreneur Pitch Competition at this year’s Global Corporate Venturing and Innovation Summit, her initiatives to make the process of receiving birth control as simple as possible have also been recognised at this years Future Planet Awards as the winner of the special category award.

Here is an exclusive interview with Dr. Sophia about how she is changing the way birth control is received and understood.

First and foremost, please tell us a bit about your background and expertise:

Thanks for having me! To start, I have 20 years of experience in medicine. I serve as a clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at Stanford Medical School and graduated from MIT, UCSF Medical School, and UC Berkeley with a MPH in Maternal Child Health. I am the Co-Founder and CEO of  Pandia Health and enjoy educating the public and other physicians about birth control, acne, weight management, and other adolescent health issues. I believe that birth control and women's reproductive health is so important, especially in the formative years. I hope to be a pioneer in this industry and start a genuine conversation to become a resource for women and young girls all around the world. I’ve had incredible opportunities, such as hosting a TedX Talk, to create awareness - I truly think this is something special.

What do you think is lacking in birth control education and how is Pandia Health changing the conversation?

We are trying to de-stigmatize birth control. Birth control pills and rings and IUD with hormone, implant, and shot can be used for more than just birth control. We can use birth control to treat painful periods, heavy periods, periods that cause anemia, periods that make women who have anemia worse, to prevent endometrial and ovarian cancer. There are about 5 different progesterones and 3 different levels of estrogens that can be in the birth control pill. so if you don’t like the pill you are on, there are LOTS of others to try.  

Did you know that the top cause of missed school/work in women under the age of 25 is their periods?

We have launched #PeriodsOptional. We have a blog, a YouTube channel, and a dedicated website which we will be launching soon. A research study with 1000 women showing that FEW of their doctors have discussed #PeriodsOptional.

We are approaching this from parents of adolescents to adolescent women to perimenopausal women. I had the honor of speaking at my MIT 25th reunion during the TIM talks about #PeriodsOptional and we had women who were interested for themselves as well as fathers who had questions for their daughters and wives. We’re going to make women’s lives better by decreasing the number of periods, decreasing landfill via fewer tampons/pads, increasing school and work attendance.

Pandia Health is educating women through media, blogs, Quora, in person talks at schools, workplaces, sororities, online, youtube videos, interviews on blogs.

We are also collaborating on an academic paper to change the name from OCP to EPP. Oral Contraceptive Pill to Estrogen Progesterone Pills) to take away the stigma of it being for birth control. To take away this political football that they have made of women’s health.  We already have POP - progestin only pills, so EPPs would be more clear and less stigmatized.

Women’s health is more than just birth control, it’s about being educated on every step of taking care of your body. Curious about the Morning After Pill, EC, Emergency Contraception, Plan B? Here’s What You Need To Know.

Are there any misconceptions about birth control and women’s health you would like to address?

Yes. This incessant menstruation is a modern construct. If we compare ourselves to women in Mali, Africa per Dr. Beverly Straussman’s research, we have 350-400 periods in our lives, they only have 100. They start their periods at 16, have 3 periods a year, 8 children, breastfeed for 15-18 months. We start at 12, have 13 periods/year, have 1-2 children, breastfeed for 3-6 months. It’s hard to get it into people’s minds that if you are NOT on medicines, then you should have a period every day (otherwise, we need to figure out why you aren’t such as thyroid, malnutrition, stress, etc)  However, we have medications that can turn off periods safely.

Where do you see Pandia Health going and why do you think this new way of service is going to work?

We are building the Brand that Women Trust with Their Health. We are the ONLY women-founded, woman led, practicing reproductive health doctor-, 20+ yrs of reproductive health advocacy-  founded/led company in this space. It took a woman to realize that we have #BetterThingsToDo than run to the pharmacy each month and that if women can’t get to their ob/gyn’s office for a prescription, then they should still have easy access to birth control. It’s going to work because we have made it work and because women want/need this service. Ask any woman on the pill, patch, ring if she is tired of going to the pharmacy and would like it delivered. I’m willing to bet she will say YES!

Congratulations again and thank you, Dr. Sophia, and your team at Pandia Health, for your achievements and exemplifying our mission to proliferate change!

For more information, watch Pandia Health’s YouTube Channel and visit pandiahealth.com to learn how to start accessing free birth control today.

Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on all things happening at Future Planet Capital.

Congenica: Poster Child for Research Commercialisation

When Genome Research Limited agreed to license the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute technology and back the spin-out of Congenica in 2014, the Wellcome Trust was laying the foundations for a new cohort of biodata driven companies to grow and flourish on the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus in Cambridge, UK. Today, Congenica is a trailblazing success story that Sanger seniors are keen to replicate.

Congenica’s new CEO, Dr David Atkins and Chief Scientific Officer, Nick Lench.

Dr. David Atkins, Congenica’s new CEO, and Dr. Nick Lench, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, sat down with The Future Planet Blog to share their insights following both firm’s success in securing MOU’s during Secretary of State for International Trade, Liam Fox’s recent delegation to China and discuss Congenica’s current plans for global commercial expansion.

In the winter of 2013, a new start-up entered into a partnership with Genomics England for the UK 100,000 Genomes Project – an initiative to sequence the genomes of 100,000 UK National Health Service (NHS) patients with rare disease or cancer. The genome annotation assessment challenge was known as the “Genome Bake Off,” in a nod to the much-loved British television show where amateur chefs vie to make the tastiest dessert treats.

The team gathered their seed funding and set up base camp in a portacabin on the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, in Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, only big enough for a handful of people.  

“Each company in the bake-off was sent 16 genomes to analyse,” says Lench. “We had a core team of 3-4 people and drew on expertise from Great Ormond Street Hospital in the form of myself and Professor Phil Beales, and from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, with key inputs from Dr Richard Durbin and Dr Matthew Hurles. All of us, co-founders of Congenica.”

“What was different about Congenica was that our team combined the bioinformatics and analytical capabilities from the Sanger with clinical expertise from Great Ormond Street,” says Dr Lench. “We were able to identify rare mutations that someone from a pure software background wouldn’t have easily spotted, and produce a clinical report.”

Their Bake-Off victory, announced in October 2014, helped to precipitate the launch of Congenica as an independent commercial entity. In November of that year, Congenica – now firmly focused on developing tools to support clinicians in diagnosing rare diseases, a platform called SapientiaTM – picked up its first VC investment from Cambridge Innovation Capital, rapidly followed by another from Amadeus Capital Partners.

Changing attitudes

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is a genomics research centre of global repute. It bears the name of Frederick Sanger, the British double Nobel Prize winning scientist who developed the initial paradigm shifting method of DNA sequencing that was used in the original Human Genome Project in the 90s.

“The Sanger Institute is a name that opens doors and minds,” says Atkins, “it's great to be around this free flow of innovative ideas and extensive network of deeply talented and inquisitive people. It’s an exciting place to work and we are very happy being here.”

Congenica and Digital China Health signed a MOU on genomic data analytics research and development to implement a medical big data strategy in China

Today, the Institute has a “BioData Innovation Centre” on campus and is encouraging other start-ups to join Congenica on-site. “We are a trailblazer for them,” says Atkins. “They see us as a poster child for what they want to do more of.”

Global Expansion

It’s now been four years since the UK 100K Genomes Project Bake Off, and a  year since the firm’s Series B financing round, when Future Planet Capital took a stake alongside Parkwalk Advisors, Beijing Genomics Institute and Healthlink Capital, while original investors CIC and Amadeus injected further sums.

Going from start-up poster child to mature profitable genomics business is no easy feat. “We are still early on in our commercialisation path,” says Atkins. Dr Atkins’ own expertise is precisely matched to this challenge. “My time selling diagnostic services to clinicians really woke me up to the challenge of rare diseases in postnatal care,” he says. “The diagnostic odyssey is a difficult, expensive and unsatisfying process. Nearly 7% of all births, or 3.5 million people in the UK alone, are affected by a rare disease.”

Over the past three years, the company has continued to improve and refine their gold-standard clinical decision software for interpreting genomic data, SapientiaTM. Now, they are concentrating on commercialising through a series of specialised partnerships. Congenica is already an interpretation partner in a number of large scale projects around the world, including in the UK, China and Portugal.

The company’s UK National Health Service partnership has also helped them to forge their credibility and prove their integrity, as well as refine its software for clinical use. “Our second set of partners are health delivery networks, including insurers,” Atkins adds, “thanks to our relationship with the Beijing Genomics Institute, we just signed a partnership with Digital Health China,” he says. During the Prime Ministers recent visit to China, Congenica and Future Planet Capital were among the British companies signing £9bn worth of deals with Chinese companies and investors. Congenica also has strategic partnerships in the US, including with the New York Genome Center.

The Chinese partnership is a particularly interesting one for a genomics specialist. “This is an attractive market because China is a key player in the genomics revolution,” Atkins explains. “They don’t have such deeply entrenched clinical methods, so they’re looking to adopt genomics directly into their routine medicine.” This is a significant contrast to the major western markets, where the hurdles to introducing any new medical technology can be very high. “Healthcare is a very difficult area to drive change, and for good reason,” says Atkins. “The barriers are there to protect patients. It’s up to us to explain the economic benefit and demonstrate the value proposition for something that is, on the face of it, quite expensive.”

With the time-frame involved, the willingness of Congenica’s investors to take a long-term view has been of critical importance. “CIC and Amadeus are very aligned, very mature and have deep insight on this technology,” says Atkins. “They know that a credible foundation is extremely important, and at Congenica we are continuing to prove that.” Future Planet Capital are firmly committed to a patient, long-horizon strategy.