Update (30/04/2020): The French VC firm Kurma Partners has completed the final closing of its third therapeutic fund, exceeding its initial target of €150M.
The final closing of Kurma Biofund III was supported by Bpifrance, the European Investment Fund, Idinvest Partners, the Pasteur Institute, the German public development bank NRW.BANK, and Servier Laboratories. Kurma managed to exceed its initial target by around €10M.
Kurma Biofund III is designed to finance up to 15 biotechs with an average of €10M per recipient. According to Kurma, the fund has already financed the creation of five biotechs in France, Germany, and Belgium. One example of Kurma’s role in founding startups is the German oncology company Tacalyx, whose €7M seed round was co-led by Kurma in September last year.
Published 14/12/2018
The French venture capital firm Kurma Partners completed the first closing of its biggest fund so far, expected to total €150M. The fund will focus on helping companies developing therapeutics for rare diseases.
The expected end amount of the new fund Biofund III, €150M, is over twice as big as Kurma’s previous funds, Biofund I and II.
Rémi Droller, Partner at Kurma, told me that this first closing is well on track to meet the target. “We have other commitments which will be materialized in the coming weeks representing about 90% of this target,” he confirmed.
As with Biofund II, Biofund III is investing in both new and more established biotechs. Kurma did not disclose which companies it would fund with the money, but expects to make its first investments in new and existing biotechs in early 2019.
“We are still looking for new commercial enterprises with a focus on rare diseases but, with this fund, we open the investment to other indications like oncology, metabolic, central nervous system and cardiovascular,” Droller said.
The Biofunds have helped to create notable companies, such as Dynacure, whose Series A raised €47M in July, and Step Pharma, with a Series A of €15M in 2017. Orphazyme, who had an oversubscribed IPO of €80M last year, is also a past beneficiary of Kurma.
The large size of Biofund III compared with previous installments reflects a trend of larger investments happening for medical companies in Europe. “The trend is clearly that the fund is becoming bigger and bigger and as we want to be able to remain a leading investor post-creation in larger financing,” Droller concluded.
Image from Shutterstock