Bond Digital Health secures £1 million funding boost

Leading Wales-based medtech firm Bond Digital Health has secured a further £1 million cash injection to support its plans for growth.

The Cardiff-headquartered company, which has developed a data capture and management system for lateral flow diagnostic tests, raised the investment through its existing shareholders.

The investment included equity funding of £350,000 from the Development Bank of Wales, with the remainder coming from members of Wealth Club, the high-net-worth investment service.

Investors through Wealth Club included the company’s CEO, Ian Smith, and its chair, Wayne Harvey.

The current funding round closes at the end of January, with Bond aiming to raise a further £500,000.

The funding will be used to expand the team over the next year, including a new customer success team and additional resources in the sales, marketing and product development teams.

Some of these roles will service Bond’s growing international customer base as the company expands overseas.

CEO Ian Smith said: “This has been another important year of growth and development for Bond Digital Health. Now that we have several international customers signed up to our platform, we need to make sure we successfully service their needs 24/7. This funding will help us do that by ensuring we have the right people in the right roles. I’d like to put on record my thanks to the Development Bank of Wales and Wealth Club for helping us get to this point.”

Mark Bowman, Senior Investment Executive at Development Bank of Wales, said: “Ian and the team at Bond have a bright future ahead as their technology has the potential to revolutionise the management of lateral flow test result data.  We are proud to continue to support the growth of the business with our equity investment from our Wales Flexible Investment Fund.”

Financed by the Welsh Government and the Development Bank of Wales, the £500 million Wales Flexible Investment Fund provides loans, mezzanine finance and equity for deals between £25,000 and £10 million. 15 year terms are available.

Last year, Bond received almost £2 million in equity funding and more than £200,000 in UK and Welsh Government grants, which allowed it to expand its development team and bring its key product, Transform®, to market.

Transform® is the lateral flow industry’s leading data management platform. It records lateral flow test (LFT) results and additional data in real time, via the Transform® app. All data is captured on the platform - and becomes instantly available to view on the Transform® dashboard.