Newsletter

Innovate in Greece by SEV & Endeavor Greece

Nicholas Galakatos: How does someone invest 10 billion in healthcare?

His mother was a doctor and his father a businessman. Born in Thessaloniki, he studied at Reed, MIT, and Harvard before entering the workforce. Today, Nicholas Galakatos works for the investment firm Blackstone and manages more than $10 billion.

He and Marco Veremis talk about the generations of drugs, the leaps of progress made by medicine and biotechnology, as well as the problems that science must face as life expectancy increases.

They discuss the 30,000 recorded diseases, the cost of creating a drug - which can be as high as 2.5 billion! - and the proverbial inconsistency of people who are asked to take their medicines.

We'd like to thank Eurobank and Grant Thornton for supporting the production of the Innovative Greeks Talks series, via Growth Awards, the leading initiative for Business Excellence.

Watch on
YouTube

Listen on
Apple Podcasts

Listen on
Spotify

Listen on
Google Podcasts

Despite the climate of uncertainty created by the elections, and despite broader investor ambivalence, Greek startups have found their way to the funding cannulas with the ecosystem recording significant deals in the year to date.

Convert Group has secured new funding of €2 million from Greek angel investors. Since its establishment, Convert Group has raised a total of €5.9 million. Last year, it raised €2.5 million, also from Greek angel investors.

Anodyne Nanotech, a biotech company based in Athens and Boston, successfully raised additional funding of $2.25Μ, making significant strides in its growth journey for further development of its innovative patented technology, the Hero Patch. This new funding round was led by Big Pi Ventures and raises the total amount of capital invested to $6.5M. The company’s patented, solid-state, porous microneedle technology provides the first effective platform, Hero Patch, to deliver milligrams of biologics transdermally.

Aidplex completes funding round with the help of TECS Capital and Angel Investors, raising a total of $340,000. Aidplex, a MedTech startup from Thessaloniki, Greece based in the US, is changing the way scoliosis is treated with its ScolioSense product.

PD Neurotechnology, a medical device company, announced that it has secured a strategic investment from Crimson International Investment (CII), the Al Jazira Group's investment arm that specializes in fast paced and disruptive technologies. In addition to the investment, CII, which is based in Abu Dhabi, will become the exclusive distributor of the company's PDMonitor in the Gulf countries.

Greek scale-up FlexCar successfully surpassed €300 million in investment. The latest round was led by US-based Data Point Capital, known for investments in pioneering companies within e-commerce, and digital tech sectors. The new capital will be utilized to expand the company’s fleet in the Greek, Cypriot, and Italian markets, as well as its new market Mexico.

The emerging ecosystem of Greek startups operating in the life sciences sector is becoming highly visible to investors. More than 100 life science startups have raised more than €670 million in capital over the past 8 years, with life science putting Greece on the radar of investors looking for new success stories.

COPE-Nano is the first EU funded Center of Excellence in Greece and the first in Europe that is focused in Nanotechnologies and Organic Electronics. The Center aims to become a leader of European and international research and innovation at the rapidly evolving fields of Organic Electronics, Nanomedicine and Nanotechnology - that have applications in Green Energy, Electronics, Information and Communication Technologies, Medicine and Agriculture.

The European Business Angels Congress (EBAN Congress 2023), held in Thessaloniki from 24 to 26 May 2023, welcoming 300 business angels from around the world, as well as 100 institutions and startups. The event was organized by the Hellenic Investment and Foreign Trade Company (Enterprise Greece), in cooperation with the European Business Angels Network (EBAN) and the Hellenic Business Angels Network (HeBAN) and with the support of Beyond.

Stability, credibility, tax breaks and financial incentives are some of the things that representatives of the Greek startup ecosystem are calling for from the government that will emerge after the elections.

Cisco Systems further strengthens its footprint in Greece, while upgrading the role of our country in its global network. Investments are made both directly and through the global ecosystem it has created. In the coming period, Cisco's International Centre for Digital Transformation and Digital Skills that it set up three years ago in Thessaloniki is expected to be upgraded to a global hub, no longer limited to the Balkans. At the same time, it strategic partner Estarta is also launching activities in Greece and has taken on the technical support of its clients worldwide.

PwC has inaugurated a new digital centre in Ioannina, strengthening its presence in Greece with the addition of another satellite office. The Digital Center Ioannina aims at leveraging Ioannina's existing knowledge pool and its excellent technological and entrepreneurial ecosystem to offer opportunities for growth, employment and digital upskilling.

e-satisfaction is a company that uses customer feedback to help understand customer experience and journey. We talked with Evangelos Kotsonis, CEO and founder. Here's what he told us.

At the 5th Healthcare - Life Sciences meetup we welcome Mr. Stelios Papadopoulos, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Biogen with whom we will discuss global trends in the field of health sciences and the growth potential of the Greek innovation ecosystem.

Interested in a job with a fast-growing Greek startup? Are you a Greek startup looking for the right people to hire?

Check IG @WORK

Do you want to get involved in the Greek innovation ecosystem?

Join Innovative Greeks

Tell us what you want us to cover in the next issue, and who to interview or invite to speak at one of our next events. Get in touch at info@innovativegreeks.gr

Want to stop receiving emails from us? You can unsubscribe here.