Mind the Byte gets international in Denmark

Mind the Byte –located at Barcelona Science Park (PCB) and specializing in the development of  cloud  technologies for drug discovery– just opened a branch at the Copenhagen Bio Science Park (COBIS), as a first step in the internationalization that the star-up has started with the strategic support of ACCIÓ, the agency for business competiveness of the Generalitat (Government of Catalonia). With the aim of strengthening the consolidation and expansion of its business model, Mind the Byte presented today at the PCB a crowdfunding campaign of 100,000 Euros managed by Crowdcube. This is the company´s second capital extension  in less than a year; in late 2014 it closed a financing round of 200,000 Euros led by InKemia.

Mind the Byte ApS, the Danish branch of the company, has joined the Medicon Valley Alliance, the organization coordinated and promoted by Medicon Valley Region, a biocluster including eastern Denmark and southern Sweden that consists of 12 universities, 32 hospitals, seven science and technology parks and about 650 biotechnology, pharmaceutical, medical technology and corporate contract research companies (CRO's acronym in English).

“We have chosen the Medicon Valley Region as the headquarters of our first international branch because it is one of Europe's most dynamic bioregions in the transfer of knowledge among universities, hospitals and industry and a leading cluster in the promotion of scientific, technological and business innovation", explains Alfons Nonell-Canals, founder and CEO of Mind the Byte.

Mind the Byte has just also signed a commercialization agreement with YouDoBio –one of the leading Danish companies in the commercialization of bioinformatics services– to introduce their products and services in the academic sector.

The company has also started a collaboration with Copenhagen University with a project to predict enzymes optimization for catalytic processes.

“So far, our experience in Denmark has been very positive. The agreement with YouDoBio and support of the Copenhagen Capacity and Invest in Denmark, show it. Our active participation in Nordic Life Science, the leading trade fair in the Nordic countries that was held last week in Stockholm, has confirmed the great potential of the whole Scandinavian region, "adds Nonell-Canals.

The company has the support of ACCIÓ to enforce its internationalization. Núria Betriu, ACCIÓ’s CEO, declares that “internationalization of the innovation developed in Catalonia is a key action for our country, and from ACCIÓ we provide added value to companies like Mind the Byte, with a strong innovation component and a high growth capability, so as to help them in establishing international offices, or in the search for international partners for their projects”.

Public and private funding to expedite the business plan

To consolidate its business project and achieve the plan and achieve the objectives set in the internationalization strategic plan, Mind the Byte has launched a crowdfunding campaign managed  by Crowdcube. The company´s goal is to achieve a minimum of 100,000 Euros which will be allocated to boost the international marketing of its services and cloud products for computational drug discovery in the SaaS (Software as a Service) modality, a system of which the company is a pioneer worldwide in the chemical and bioinformatics sector.

This is the second capital extension the company has done in less than a year. In late 2014, Mind the Byte closed a funding round –led by InKemia IUCT Group– in the amount of 200,000 Euros, that was allocated to the development of its cloud computing products and services for computational drug discovery and to increase its staff, constituting a Board of Trustees composed of renowned prestige and experience in the biotech and technological fields.

Last July, the start-up received an additional 50,000 Euros from the European Commission through the SME Instrument under the Horizon 2020 program to carry out the feasibility study of the Datanimbus project on big data and personalized medicine.

“Our goal is to position ourselves in the national and international market as the leading company in SaaS for computational drug discovery. So far we have concentrated our efforts on developing cutting-edge technology in scientific and technical software via the cloud. We managed to be the first technological partner of Amazon Web Services (AWS) of the Spanish State specializing in cloud solutions for the biotechnology and biomedical research and, since the creation of the company in 2011, we have increased by 25% the volume of business in this sector. Now, with the funds obtained from the crowfunding campaign and the funding from the SME Instrument we wish to consolidate the marketing of our products in the national market and, in turn, boost our expansion in the international market", says Alfons Nonell-Canals.

Source: PCB