Inova secures additional funding from its founders and NextStage AM to support its strong growth

In a financial deal of 6M€, NextStage AM takes a stake in Inova, a SaaS partnering platform for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, to further boost its growth.
Founded in 2010, Inova develops a SaaS partnering platform that facilitates collaborations between pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Inova’s solutions are used by over 120 companies, including half of the top 50 pharmaceutical companies, such as Roche, Novartis, Lilly and Bayer, to manage their external partnerships and accelerate their therapeutic advances.
The life sciences industry is undergoing a strong push towards partnering, driven by their need to innovate. Wanting to capitalize on this opportunity for growth, Inova is welcoming NextStage AM as a new shareholder. Inova’s Annual Recurrent Revenue has grown 30% year to year over the past 3 years and is expected to exceed 6 million euros this year. With this new financing, Inova anticipates even faster growth through:

• Inova Partnering Platform, covering the entire partnering lifecycle: Widely used by the business development and alliance management teams, Inova’s partnering platform is being adopted by more departments, such as R&D, M&A and manufacturing. These departments are all increasing their activities with external partners.
• Inova One-on-One Partnering, the digital networking solution for conferences: Since 2015, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) and Inova have partnered to facilitate exchanges between life science companies during the industry’s biggest conferences. In 2018, for example, this solution enabled over 45,000 business meetings to be organized at BIO’s annual convention in Boston, USA. Based on its success, more and more life science events are adopting Inova’s networking solution.

By teaming up with NextStage AM, Inova will unleash its ability to innovate, reinforce its marketing investments, and execute acquisitions. Inova has offices in Lyon, New York and Tokyo. The company currently employs 50 people and plans to recruit an additional 15 employees in 2019. Inova generates over 90% of its turnover outside of France (including 45% in the United States) and expects to see its recurring revenue grow 40% in 2019.
“NextStage AM is a great fit for Inova. We were attracted by their strong entrepreneur/investor culture and enthusiasm for our ambitious, groundbreaking projects,” explained Gilles Toulemonde, CEO and co-founder of Inova.
“Inova manages to be both a leading player and a disruptive one in an industry that is undergoing an enormous amount of upheaval. This industry is reinventing itself and Inova has everything it takes to grow and become a strategic partner of top biopharma companies. We are proud to be able to accompany Inova over the long term,” added Nicolas de Saint Etienne, Partner, NextStage AM.
About Inova
Inova provides a cloud-based software and services for life sciences companies to better manage their partnering lifecycle. By using Inova our clients manage their biopharma opportunities more efficiently. They find all their partnering information in one place, track their deals and alliances easily and report on their pipeline and activities in seconds.
We have also developed strategic partnerships that make data from the 20 biggest biopharma events automatically available in Inova, providing our users with always up-to-date company and contact information. Over 120 life science companies, including 50% of the top 50 pharmaceutical companies and many midsize pharma and biotechs already use Inova. We are headquartered in Lyon, France, and also operate offices in New York and Tokyo. For more information, visit inova.io
About NextStage AM
Based in Paris, NextStage AM is a leading growth equity firm. NextStage AM invests in a limited number of innovative French and European medium-sized businesses, bringing an entrepreneur/investor expertise and significant operational and international experience. NextStage AM provides these companies with the means to accelerate their development and their ability to innovate in order to become champions of their industry, in France and globally, through organic and/or external growth. For more information, visit www.nextstage.com