Novena Global Lifecare defers listing after MOU with Yozma BioScience

Singapore

HOMEGROWN healthcare chain Novena Global Lifecare has held off its IPO plans following a recent fund injection. Instead, it is looking to list its subsidiary Novena Life Sciences probably sooner than itself.

Novena Global Lifecare had in July 2017 announced year plans to list on the Hong Kong market, but was convinced otherwise after a round of private investing and has decided to defer the listing.

Novena Life Sciences has received external investment of around US$5 million from the Yozma Group and several high-profile pre-IPO investors, with the Novena holding company matching that with another US$5 million. This is part of a Memorandum of Understanding between Novena Life Sciences and Yozma BioScience Holdings.

The MOU gives Novena exclusive rights to knowledge transfers of Yozma BioScience technologies in Asia, as well as the aforementioned US$5 million investment. Yozma received an equity stake in Novena Life Sciences of around 25 per cent in a convertible bond structure with a 24 to 36 months' window of conversion.

The cousins Terence and Nelson Loh, co-founders of the Novena Global Lifecare Group, have described the joint venture between Novena Life Sciences and the Yozma Group as "the first of its kind in Asia". Part of the US$5 million investment from the Yozma Group has been used in the funding and opening of a new institute in Shanghai.

This institute will be named the Novena Global Life Science Institute and will be the first life sciences institute powered by artificial intelligence in Asia. Located in Cedarlake Centre, Shanghai, the 15,000 square feet space will open by the end of the year and will serve as the research and development hub for Yozma BioScience.

Novena Life Sciences is the life science arm of Novena Global Lifecare, and is a bioscience company with a focus on big data, the business activities of medical screenings, and the provision of new technologies to address the many facets of life sciences and healthcare.

Yozma BioScience is a joint venture between the Yozma Group and the Weizmann Institute of Science. The Yozma Group is a venture capital firm, while the Weizmann Institute of Sciences is a multidisciplinary research centre that, as of 2017, is associated with six Nobel laureates and three Turing Award winners. Yozma BioScience is a venture aimed to commercialise Weizmann's technology.

The MOU between Yozma BioScience and Novena Life Sciences will allow Yozma to capitalise on Novena's numerous North Asian clinics. North Asia also happens to be Novena's largest market, with clinics, hospitals, and health screening and medical centres in over 40 cities within the region.

The arrangement makes it easier for Yozma to commercialise and test its technologies in a market, while Novena gets exclusive rights to those technologies in Asia. A handheld ultrasound scanner that replicates the function of an MRI machine is an example of the technologies.

These innovations are exactly what Novena looks for. Mr Nelson Loh said: "I believe disruption leads to improvement."

The cousins describe the relationship between Novena and Yozma as symbiotic, and they do their part by giving talks to Yozma entrepreneurs.

The research and use of new medical technologies have been a Novena Global staple. With the MOU, Novena will be in an even better position to push the established norms in its field. "What we're trying to do is give the consumer a service that's better and more affordable," said Mr Nelson Loh.

The rest of the US$ 5 million investment will be used for joint research on, implementation of and seeding of the technologies they partners create.

According to the Lohs, there are plans for Novena Life Sciences to be listed within the next two years, but they do not expect to list it in Taiwan. Instead, they are looking towards Hong Kong for the subsidiary's IPO.

When asked about the future, they said: "More of the money should be going to more prevention, early awareness and early detection."

Novena Global Lifecare seems to be looking to further focus on wellness, not just healthcare. "We always want to be more on the preventive side," said Mr Nelson Loh.