Linkcare, which was born in Hospital Clínic, is a collaborative medicine platform. The company has just agreed the entry into its shareholding of Guangzhou Global Star Investment, a Chinese fund that will inject about €5M for a majority stake, conditional on the company moving its headquarters to the business park in Canton.
About Linkcare
Linkcare, started as a telemedicine software company and has evolved into a collaborative medicine platform.
The company has three lines of business. Integrated care units (to design, share and implement integrated care protocols that allow all doctors, specialists and caregivers treating a patient to collaborate; in Spain, the platform is used for example in the Basque public health service). Another is the tool for research teams (to conduct and monitor clinical trials with patients in different countries) or collaborative research. And the third is the so-called collaborative medicine, which means the participation in the treatment protocols of caregivers or relatives to monitor (blood pressure, nutrition).
Behind this project is Jim Martínez Roldán (doctor and Esade-trained, he created the artificial vision technology company CTA in the United States in 1985 and sold it to Indra in 2007). "In 2010, I decided to see what was going on in China, just as I had looked in the US when I was young", and he explains that over the years he has built up a wide network of contacts there. At the same time, Roldán joined Linkcare as a business angel, a company of which he has become CEO, with José Manuel Sánchez as general manager.
Linkcare had a turnover of more than 350,000 euros in 2016, and for 2017 it expects to reach 500,000 euros, 15% in Spain, and the rest in other European countries, and in China. In China, the company already has two activities, Roldán explains. One, in Beijing, of collaborative community care for the care of the elderly, inspired by the Radar programme in Barcelona, and which has financial support from the CDTI; and the other, using the platform for the training of 1.3M, and now a service to 20,000 doctors in Tianjin.
Linkcare had already received a €300,000 round in 2015 from Esade Ban.
About the operation
Now the Chinese fund Guangzhou Global Star Investment, has decided to invest €5M in the company, becoming the main shareholder, with the condition that its headquarters will be located in the business park of Canton. This transaction enables Linkcare to increase its presence in the Chinese healthcare market. The Barcelona headquarters will remain the operational base for Europe and America.
Spanish companies on which China has set its sights
In 2016, China overtook the US as the world's largest buyer, investing more than €200 billion to take positions in companies around the globe.
Of all the money disbursed from Asia, almost 89 billion has ended up in Europe, a record amount and three times the amount invested last year. But the distribution between countries has been uneven. China has taken a step backwards in Italy, where its presence in corporate operations has plummeted, while in France and the UK it has remained high, although far from its best moments.
In Spain, although Chinese participation is still small, in 2016 it was 14 times higher than in 2015.This growth has been partly due to the sale by ACS of its subsidiary Urbaser to China's CNTY, for which the latter will pay a price of between 1,164 and 1,399 million euros.
This purchase, which has not yet materialised, has been joined by 10 other transactions of Chinese companies in Spain so far in 2016, according to Dealogic's register. The canning company Albo has been owned by Shanghai Kaichuang since this summer, while Ángel Corcóstegui's private equity fund (Magnum Capital) set its sights on the also Chinese JSTI to sell its stake in Eptisa Servicios de Ingeniería.
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