IvyCap leads pre-Series A funding in health-tech firm Elucidata

Elucidata, a biomedical molecular data company, on Thursday said it has raised $5 million (Rs 36.4 crore) in its pre-Series A funding round led by IvyCap Ventures.

Boston-based seed stage firm Hyperplane Venture Capital and a few angel investors also participated in this round, said Elucidata in a statement.

Elucidata will use the funds to expand operations in the US and to accelerate product development. Part of the funds will also be used for hiring and marketing.

The Delhi, Cambridge, and Massachusetts-based startup was founded in 2015 by Abhishek Jha, Swetabh Pathak and Richard Kibbey. 

It is developing a drug-discovery platform called Polly. Scientists can access Polly to get curated and analysis-ready data from over 100,000 biomedical datasets. 

The company currently has over 30 partners in industry and academia as customers, it said. Elucidata has offices in Cambridge, San Francisco, New Delhi and Bengaluru.

Vikram Gupta, founder and managing partner, IvyCap Ventures, said that the investment in Elucidata was driven by how biomedical data relating to drug discovery is increasing in diversity and volume at a rapid rate.

IvyCap Ventures, which was founded in 2011 by Gupta, focuses on an entrepreneur-centric investment approach, with an emphasis on sectors such as consumer, healthcare, enterprise technology, financial technology and emerging technology.

Its other healthcare bets include Pharmarack and BeYouPlus.

Earlier this month, VCCircle reported that Pharmarack had received offers from strategic investors.

Hyperlane was founded by Vivjan Myrto, John Murphy and

Brendan Kohler in 2015. The seed-stage investment firm focuses on startups working on machine intelligence, sensor technology, robotics, virtual reality and augmented reality, and cloud computing.