Medicinal cannabis startup, CannVaLate, has raised $4 million in Series A funding, with over 50% of funds secured from within the medical community.
One of the cofounders is former Cann Group medical director, Dr Sud Agarwal, who said the company is focused on making sure more Australian patients have access to a supportive and knowledgeable medical practioner who has all the resources to initiate and manage medicinal cannabis in their patients.
Dr Agarwal is specialist anaesthetist with over 20 years experience in the medical industry and considered an expert in the medicinal cannabis industry, with current advisory roles to both Little Green Pharma and Cann Group.
What is the motivation behind CannVaLate?
Dr Agarwal said, “Sadly there has only been 1300 prescriptions in total ever written in the two years since legalisation of medicinal cannabis and many of these were as part of short-term clinical trials.
“Cannvalate has the primary goal of converting the estimated 100,000 patients who are currently accessing illegal black market cannabis for medical purposes on to legitimate medically prescribed cannabis so they can be guaranteed that what they are consuming is infection-free, dosed appropriately and has rigorous safety monitoring in place.
“The fact that our series A funding came predominantly from Doctors demonstrates that our business model resonates well with the medical profession and most of those involved have gone on to become active cannabis prescribers through our Cannvaclinics.”
What has CannVaLate achieved so far?
CannVaLate are Australia’s single largest group of medicinal cannabis prescribers nationally having onboarded 13 existing medical clinics in the last month with a further 7 in the pipeline, comprising in excess of 50 fully resourced doctors ready to prescribe.
CannVaLate are currently preparing for a Series B funding round later this year ahead of a planned IPO in early 2019. The funding will go towards a number of areas including training and education resources that will help build the network of Cannvaclinics throughout Australia.
“We have set a target of 1000 prescribing doctors by the end of 2019 and with this hope to remove the stigma for patients and doctors to explore medicinal cannabis as a bona fide therapy for their medical conditions,” added Dr Agarwal.
