HANGZHOU, China, July 17 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- Tigermed Consulting Co., Ltd. (“Tigermed”) announced today that it has successfully closed its Series A financing from Qiming Venture Partners, a premier venture capital firm based in Shanghai. With capital injection, Tigermed has entered into a period of rapid expansion. Tigermed is one of the largest Contract Research Organizations (CRO) in China, having played a leading role in the country’s clinical trials industry.
“Over the past six years, we have established a globally competitive team with more than 100 professionals. We have set up 13 offices in both the U.S. and China, with 150 business customers from both home and abroad. Our leading management and service system and our world class data management system have laid a solid foundation for the rapid development of Tigermed,” Dr. Ye Xiaoping, CEO and founder of Tigermed. “In the past, we turned down quite a few investment requests from various leading venture firms, private equity firms and investment banks. We only accepted investments when we were ready for expansion. Qiming Venture partners are outstanding business leaders and venture capitalists with rich experience in international operations. Qiming not only brings us funding, but also helps accelerate the development of the company, playing a strategic role for the future of Tigermed,” added Dr. Ye Xiaoping.
Gary Rieschel, Founder and Managing Director of Qiming, expressed, “We aim to help entrepreneurs fulfill their dreams in both China and the U.S. The Tigermed team is the type of team that we are looking for.” As a veteran venture capitalist, Gary has invested in both the United States and China, in over 50 technology firms, many of which have achieved successful IPOs. He is very confident in Tigermed. “Qiming is seeking to invest in fast-growing markets and industrial leaders. In the mature pharmaceutical industry, the CRO input in clinical study takes up more than 40% of the total input of the industry, indicating a huge potential for Tigermed. We hope that the CRO input in clinical trials in China will remain with this strong momentum in the over the next five years, growing into a billion dollar market in 2010-2011,” added Gary Rieschel.
Hu Xubo, Director of Healthcare Investment Sector of Qiming Ventures, added, “One of the reasons that we invested in Tigermed is the strong leadership of the management team and the overall dedication of their team, which are devoted to clinical trial services and have years of work experience in multinational firms. Tigermed is striving to become a leading CRO in Asia. More importantly, we appreciate the service quality of Tigermed. It has not only a great service system and network, but also a service-oriented culture. Tigermed has been getting positive feedback while working with overseas customers.”
Ms. Cao, Vice President of Tigermed, said, “The capital investment will mostly be used to recruit world class CRO talents to create a sufficient talent pool for the company. Apart from that, part of the funding will be used to improve the quality of the delivery and service system of the company.
Dr, Ye Xiaoping, CEO of Tigermed also revealed that, “Tigermed is one of the few local CROs that are capable of carrying out global, multi-center clinical trials. Quintile, the global CRO leader, is our role model and also competitor. Based on the current situation, we would like to focus more on human resources. Up to now, over 50% of Tigermed personnel hold master degrees or above, and due to the favorable corporate culture and team spirit, the turnover rate of Tigermed personnel is kept under 10%, far lower than the average for local CROs. I believe ‘Joining Tigermed is like finding your home’.”
In 2007, when the pharmaceutical industry in China witnessed a landside, Tigermed still achieved a 100% annual increase in business turnover. Along with the injection of venture capital, Tigermed will further accelerate its development and enter into a rapid growth stage.
About Tigermed
Tigermed Consulting Co., Ltd is a leading Contract Research Organization (CRO) in China with rich expertise in offering all stages of clinical trials, product registration, biometrics, and medical translation services for drugs, medical devices, diagnostic reagents and functional food products.
Tigermed was founded in 2002, registered in Hangzhou, and headquartered in Shanghai, operating 12 branch offices in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Chengdu, Xi’an, Shenyan, Nanjing, Changsha, Wuhan, and Ji’nan and one liaison office in California, the United States.
Since inception in 2002, Tigermed has been committed to providing valuable medical and pharmaceutical R&D services as well as to accelerate product development timelines by reducing R&D costs and risks. Tigermed has successfully rendered a significant amount of clinical studies, biometrics and product registration services for global and local customers.
Tigermed ranks top in undertaking innovative drug projects among local CROs, with 24 projects in total. Through the Company’s unmatched experience and outstanding achievements in the development of innovative drugs, Tigermed has been recognized as “An Innovative CRO” in China.
Compared with other local CROs, Tigermed has the following Competitive Advantages:
1. A stable, highly competent and experienced professional team
2. Broad geographic coverage, ensuring project timeline and effectiveness
3. Extensive customer base and collaboration network
4. Recognized as “An Innovative CRO”, with rich experience in new drug
projects
5. Multinational corporation working experience and management experience
in global, multi-center clinical trials
Competitive therapeutic areas of Tigermed: Hepatitis, Oncology, Vaccines.
About Qiming Ventures
In Chinese, “Qiming” literally means starting point and light, purporting the beginning of a new day. Headquartered in Shanghai, Qiming Ventures is dedicated to become a leading venture capital enterprise, devoting to the risk investment to Chinese scientific fields along with its American Ignition Partners.
Currently, Qiming Ventures has over $500 million under management; together with its affiliate Ignition Partners, they manage more than $2.5 billion venture capital funds globally.
The investment team of Qiming Ventures has rich expertise, enterprise operation practices and investment management experience at home and abroad; Qiming Ventures provides finance to experienced entrepreneurs and businesses with stable profit models, hoping to assist Chinese entrepreneurs to create enterprises with business volumes of billions of US$.
Qiming Ventures is active to invest in the following sectors:
-- HealthCare
-- Media and Internet
-- Information Technology
-- Consumer and Retail
-- Clean Energy
Qiming Venture Partners won the award of “The Best Venture Firm in China” for 2007 at the 4th TopCapital Summit for Asia Pacific held in Beijing on May 15th and 16th, 2008.
For more information, please contact
Zeng Haiyan
Tel: +86-571-8998-6792
Email: PR@tigermed.net
