Finance History

Evolva Holding SA came into existence on 11 December 2009 out of the merger of Arpida Ltd. and Evolva SA.

Evolva SA
The company was seed funded by Symbion Capital, Seed Capital and VaekstFonden (now Sunstone Capital).

In August 2004 the company raised CHF 18.5 million in a first-closing of its A-round. The investors where beside the existing ones Aravis, Novartis Venture Fund, Yamanouchi Venture Capital (now Astellas Ventures) and Dansk Innovationsinvestering.

In the final closing of the A-round, the company raised an additional CHF 3.0 million. APIDC-VC joined as new investor along with the earlier investors,.

In a second round of financing, the company raised CHF 12 million in December 2006 from its existing investors.

In October 2008 the company raised CHF 28 million in the first closing of its Series B financing round. This time four new investors, Auriga Partners, Vinci Capital – Renaissance PME, Wellington Partners and BioMedInvest joined as well as most of the existing investors, Aravis, Astellas Venture, Dansk Innovation, Novartis Bioventures and Sunstone Capital. The second part of this Series B round closed on 11 December 2009 and yielded an additional CHF 16 million. New investor Entrepreneurs Fund and six existing investors (Novartis Bioventures, Dansk Innovation, Auriga Partners, Wellington Partners, BioMedInvest and Vinci Capital) participated in the second part of the Series B financing round . In addition to the funds raised in the Series B financing round, Evolva received a firm commitment (together with an initial release of funds) to invest CHF 5 million in Evolva Biotech Private Ltd (Evolva's Indian subsidiary) from Ventureast Trustee Company Private Limited.

Arpida Ltd.
The company was seed funded by New Medical Technologies (now: HBM BioVentures). In July 1998 the company raised CHF 15.3 million in the first round of financing. The four venture capital companies that invested were Alta Berkeley (UK), CDC IXIS Innovation (France), 3i Group plc (UK) and HBM BioVentures.

In a second round of financing, the company raised CHF40 million in September 2000. Along with all earlier investors, new investors were FTQ (Canada), HealthCap (Sweden), Partners Group (Switzerland) and UBS.

In May 2004, the company raised CHF 51.3 million in the third financing round, which was placed with leading international investors including swissfirst Bank (Switzerland), Temasek Holdings (Singapore), Carnegie Fund (Sweden), CDIB Bioscience Ventures I (Taiwan), CITA (France), MVI Finance (UK), Schroder ISF Swiss Small & Mid Cap Equity Fund Schroder, ISF Swiss Equity Fund and other institutional and private investors together with existing investors including Alta Berkeley, BioMedinvest, CDC IXIS Innovation, HBM BioVentures, HealthCap, 3i, Partners Group and UBS.

With completion of the Combio transaction in October 2004, Arpida has raised a further CHF34.4 million adding to the CHF51.3 million Series C financing round. The associated fund raising expands Arpida’s shareholder base to include new investors from Scandinavia (e.g. Carlsberg, Novo, Dansk Kapitalanlaeg, LD Pensions and Scandinavian Life Science Venture), Taiwan (e.g. CDIB, IBT) and France.

On May 4th 2005, Arpida has successfully completed its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in connection with its listing on the SWX Swiss Exchange and received gross proceeds of approximately CHF97.2 million before expenses.

In March 2007, Arpida successfully raised an additional CHF 51.9 million (before expenses) by issuing 1.7 million shares out of the authorised share capital via an accelerated bookbuild.

In March 2008 Arpida strengthened its financial position by issuing 1.6 million shares, raising CHF 19.7 million (after expenses and taxes).