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A Branford-based software firm is expanding and increasing its workforce, thanks to a $17.5 venture capital investment.
Core Informatics hopes to increase employment from the current 68 company-wide to 100 by the end of the year. A company spokesperson said most of those jobs will be in Branford. Of the current 68 employees, 46 work at the Branford site. By comparison, there were only 15 employees about 18 months ago.
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The company moved its headquarters from 500 E. Main St. to a larger facility at 36 East Industrial Road in September, and hopes to further expand at that site.
Core Informatics, which provides web-based data management software to the biotech industry, has closed a venture funding deal led by new investor Oak HC/FT, a Greenwich based growth-equity fund that invests in healthcare information and financial technology.
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“This round of capital will equip us to meet the strong demand for our software solutions and enable more scientific organizations to accelerate their operations and get products to market faster and more efficiently,” Core Informatics CEO Josh Geballe (pictured) said in a prepared statement. “The team at Oak HC/FT has an amazing track record of identifying emerging leaders across numerous segments of the healthcare industry, and we are thrilled to welcome their support at this time of our rapid growth.”
Core Informatics provides software products to dozens of major companies and thousands of scientists. Officials say the company has tripled in size in the past year, by providing web-based solutions to manage and analyze scientific data and automate laboratory workflows.
“Drug discovery, molecular diagnostics and other scientific domains are seeing tremendous transformation, and yet the industry still lags in terms of software solutions to support this important work,” Andrew Adams, a general partner at Oak HC/FT, said in a prepared statement. “Core Informatics is closing that gap,” said Adams, who will join Core’s board of directors.
Prior State Funding
In 2014, Core Informatics received $3 million in funding from the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD). With another $5.4 million in private funding, the company was able to move to a larger facility and begin growing its workforce. Click here to read about that.
State Rep. Lonnie Reed, D‑Branford, has been instrumental in bringing biotech companies and associated industries to town and helping secure state funding to keep them here.
“Keeping Core here in Branford has been a huge asset for the town and the state. Core’s presence helps us recruit all kinds of highly sought-after new companies,” Reed told the Eagle last week.
Reed said the new venture capital financing will help build the company’s success story.
“For those of us who believed in Core from the get-go and who fought hard for (state) incentives to keep Core here, this substantial private investment is further proof that we must continue to be proactive in identifying and encouraging the kinds of companies that are essential to a robust future for Connecticut,” Reed said.
The state DECD funding in 2014 included a grant for $250,000; and a $2.75 million loan. The company will be eligible for $1 million in loan forgiveness if it meets employment goals for Core’s Connecticut workforce.
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We were at the company’s headquarters when U.S. Senator Chris Murphy took a tour of the new offices and visited with the staff and Geballe.
Home-town Team
The history of Core Informatics is a true Branford story.
Co-founders Anthony Uzzo and Jim Gregory have known each other since they met and worked together at the Neurogen, Inc. campus in Branford. They pursued careers in pharmaceutical and technology companies before creating Core Informatics in Branford in 2006. Uzzo, who serves as president of the company, has a degree in biomedical engineering from Boston University. Gregory, executive vice president and chief software architect, has degrees from Southern Connecticut State University and Wake Forest University.
Geballe and Uzzo are Branford High School friends. Geballe was asked to join the company as CEO in 2013. He spent more than a decade at IBM, where he headed a division of the company’s Global Technology Services business. He has a bachelor’s degree from Yale and an MBA from the Yale School of Management.
In addition to the Branford site, the company opened an office in 2011 in Cambridge, Mass.; and they established an international subsidiary, Core Informatics UK Limited in London, in 2013.
Geballe was one of the speakers at a biotech forum in Branford last year sponsored by the town’s Economic Development Commission (EDC). Perry Maresca, who chairs the EDC, said there has been a recent resurgence in the biotech industry that began in Branford years ago. Click here to read about that.
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