Engender Closes $4.5m Capital Raise

June 3, 2016

Pacific Channel portfolio company Engender Technologies is moving at light speed from local success to the global stage.  Engender has just closed a $4.5 million capital raise led by Pacific Channel. With an original target of $2.5 million, the company closed fully over subscribed.  Investors ranged from one of the world’s largest dairy artificial insemination companies to leading New Zealand early stage investors, large-scale dairy farmers and the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund.

The capital will fund development of a commercial prototype chip and laboratory prototype instrument for use in trials. It will further fund commercial IP and business development to secure licensees.

In addition, Engender was yesterday announced the winner of the agricultural tech sector of the third annual World Cup Tech Challenge in the Silicon Valley. Start-ups accepted into the challenge – which last year drew entries from 200 companies and 58 countries – are considered in a “pre-global” stage, meaning they have launched their products in their respective local markets and now ready for a global launch. Engender is the first Australasian company to secure a finalist nomination and a win at this prestigious event.

Engender focuses on commercialising microfluidic and photonic technology to improve sorting of sperm by sex for the trillion dollar livestock market. The technology avoids the use of electric fields and reduces the sheer stress on the sperm membrane during processing, so is expected to improve the efficiency of sorting and performance of sex-sorted sperm.

Professor Cather Simpson, for her work as Engender’s Chief Scientist, has been named among the finalists for the Baldwins Researcher Entrepreneur Award. This award is given as part of the annual KiwiNet Research Commercialisation Awards, and recognises an entrepreneurial researcher who has made outstanding contributions to business innovation or has created innovative businesses in New Zealand through technology licencing, start-up creation or by providing expertise to support business innovation.