TraceLink Inc. said yesterday that it raised $51.5 million in a Series C financing round, bringing its total raised to $77 million. The round was led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, joining FirstMark Capital, Volition Capital and F-Prime Capital.
TraceLink developed a cloud-based global network of manufacturers, distributors, pharmacies and healthcare professionals. The firm’s system enables any company within the pharmaceutical supply chain to track and trace authentic prescription medicines, which it says will be required by law in 50 countries by 2020.
The company has earmarked some of the proceeds for hiring an additional 100 to 120 workers, with about half of the new hires coming at its North Reading, Mass., headquarters, where the bulk of its 240 employees work, CEO Shabbir Dahod told the Boston Business Journal.
“We intend to grow in all areas,” Dahod told the newspaper. “This is a global effort to secure the global pharmaceutical supply chain.”
Revenues have more than tripled over the past 2 years, he told the journal. TraceLink said more than 450 companies use its services; Dahod said about a quarter of those are pharmaceutical firms.
Although TraceLink, which also has offices in the U.K. and India, is private, Dahod told the paper that an initial public offering is “is “definitely a milestone that we’d like to achieve.”
“Thousands of businesses in the pharmaceutical supply chain need to make decisions on how to comply with time-bound regulations. With limited choices available, TraceLink wants to give these companies the opportunity to meet the regulations and achieve benefits beyond compliance with an established track and trace solution that can help them safely deliver drugs to patients,” he said in prepared remarks. “As a result of this growing industry need, we have continued to surpass our growth goals and are delighted to have this support from world-class, visionary investors to pursue our dedicated strategy in this space and further accelerate the adoption of our proven platform and leadership across the global market.”
