Chinese media reported today that Dessight Biomedical (迪视医疗), a Hangzhou-headquartered surgical robot startup, had completed a Pre-Series A+ round of funding valued at tens of millions of yuan.
The round was led by a joint fund backed by Infiniti and Orthok, an eye care products maker, with participation from NSR Financial, FoF Capital and existing shareholder Linear Capital. WinX Capital provided exclusive financial advisory services for the transaction.
Proceeds from this round will be used to develop product pipelines in the field of ophthalmic surgical robot and microsurgical robot.
The latest funding round came within five months of the previous fundraising, which took place in February and also raked in tens of millions of yuan.
The two consecutive rounds signal the high recognition of the company by the venture capital community, Chinese media reported.
cnrobopedia reported earlier that in ophthalmic surgeries, medical gear operating in the vicinity of an incision on the sclera carries the risk of causing muscle tissue damage and inhibiting post-surgery recovery.
Ideally, subretinal surgery requires an accuracy of 10 µm or less. This contrasts with the some 100 µm in the normal range of a surgeon’s tremor.
Another drawback is that experienced ophthalmic surgeons are few and have to undergo a prolonged period of training.
Dessight leverages a combination of medicine and engineering, a master-slave control scheme and a unique flexible structure, to become one of the world’s first ophthalmic surgical robot developers to achieve an accuracy of 3 µm.
“We are very happy to announce a Pre-Series A+ round,” said Dr. Cui Di, founder and CEO of Dessight. “This milestone will accelerate the technological development of our microsurgical robots and their clinical application.”
He added the firm will continue to double down on innovation to come up with a highly precise, flexible and stable robotic microsurgical platform.
This device will help surgeons perform quantifiable and visualized procedures during operations on fine tissues and in complicated surgeries.
“This will bring about a technological breakthrough in ophthalmic and microscopic surgeries,” Cui noted.
“There are massive unmet needs in the treatment of subretinal diseases, and ophthalmic surgeons are desperate for auxiliary equipment to help complete highly complicated operations,” said Zhang Shuai. “Dessight focuses on microscopic surgical solutions and stresses clinical needs to alleviate the pain points of frontline doctors with self-developed technologies.”
