H2i Ventures in the News | Spring 2024 III
Pitch wins and impressive raises…
H2i ventures are having a spring for the books!
Forcen Closes $8.35 Million Funding Round
Congratulations to H2i venture Forcen, who has announced the closing of an $8.35 million CAD funding round! The all-equity round was led by Brightspark Ventures and BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund, and brings the venture’s funding to date to $12.95 million CAD.
Forcen is a deeptech robotic company developing force/torque sensing systems for complex and unstructured robotics in surgery, logistics, and near frontier applications (space, nuclear, underwater, food/agriculture, and humanoid robotics). Founded in 2015 by Robert Brooks, Forcen has since seen impressive success, including winning the James Dyson Award in 2017. Their unique ForceFilm transducer technology enables superhuman sensitive haptic force feedback providing touch amplification and augmentation similar to how surgical optics and imaging magnify and augment a surgeon’s vision.
Of the recent milestone, Brooks shared with H2i: “This funding will allow Forcen to expand both in terms of moving to production with existing customers as well as opening up our technology to a broader group of medical and surgical robot companies at earlier stages of development. We’ll be building our unique portfolio of technologies into a set of standard development kits as well as offering a rapidly customizable solution utilizing standard sub-assemblies and generative design templates.”
Maman Biomedical Wins Top Prize at Innovative Cluster Pitch Competition
Congratulations Maman Biomedical for winning top prize at Innovation Cluster’s LevelUP Pitch Competition! The venture, led by Latchmi Raghunanan and her husband Roop Raghunanan, took home the $10,000 prize after competing against seven other companies. The event was the culminating event of the first LevelUP cohort hosted by Innovation Cluster Peterborough. Maman Biomedical is on a mission to improve the fertility treatment experience for the 36 million couples around the world that turn to IVF to complete their families. They are doing this through a series of trailblazing products in patch and gel form, targeted at eliminating pain and reducing costs to in turn reduce barriers for those facing infertility.
Their win has since been profiled by CBC Listen and The Peterborough Examiner. Of the win, the Raghunanan’s shared: “We’re really proud of how far we have come in such a short time. This win is a validation that we have strong problem-solution and founder-problem fits; and motivates us to keep making giant leaps in improving the fertility treatment experience. The funds from this win will help us accelerate the R&D process over the summer, with the goal of securing IP and de-risking our technology by the end of the year.”
AiimSense Inc., Cove Neurosciences & Helixir Medical Win Big at ICAIR Power Play
Congratulations to the finalists and winners who represented the H2i community at this year’s Power Play Pitch Competition! The event, which took place on May 6th as part of the International Conference on Aging Innovation and Rehabilitation (ICAIR), showcased an impressive array of health innovations working to improve outcomes and care for the elderly and those living with disability and illness. Five H2i ventures competed across the two categories of Innovative Start-Up and Innovative Concept, for the chance to win prizes totaling $50,000.
The Innovative Start-Up category featured two H2i ventures AiimSense Inc., pitched by Atefeh (Ati) Zarabadi and Cove Neurosciences, pitched by Nardin Samuel. Both greatly impressed judges, with AiimSense Inc. taking home the coveted first place prize of $25,000, and Cove Neurosciences taking home the third place first of $10,000. In the Innovative Concept category, three H2i ventures took to the stage to make their mark: NeuRestore Technologies, pitched by Jasmine Al-Sayegh, Helixir Medical, pitched by Moses Cook, and Panorama Health Inc., pitched by Ruilin Wu. Helixir Medical received the first-place prize of $2500.
A big congratulations to all finalists, for so strongly presenting your innovative work!