Daily Briefing: EDBI joins biotech firm's $500m funding round; Bitcoin plunges below US$9,000

And here's how startups can choose the tools to finance their companies.

From The Telegraph via Yahoo! Finance:

Bitcoin has tumbled below US$9,000 for the first time in two months after sentiment slipped amid rising regulatory concerns in India and Facebook banning "deceptive" cryptocurrency adverts.

Bitcoin has shed a fifth of its value in just three days, plunging as much as 10.5pc after India's finance minister warned that the government does not consider cryptocurrencies a legitimate form of payment system.

Elsewhere, stocks in Europe have struggled to kick on from their surging start to 2018 after hawkish signals from the Federal Reserve caused bond market jitters and sent ripples through the markets.

Read more here.

From Deal Street Asia:

The participation of EDBI, the investment arm of Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB), is notable, given the potential for the firm to partner Singapore research institutions to co-develop solutions targeted at Asian-specific diseases.

A presence in the city-state could potentially bolster the local manufacturing capabilities of novel drug development, as well as position it for entry into Indo-Asia Pacific markets. Cancer in Asia is becoming more prevalent and deadly with the WHO estimating Asian cancer deaths amounted to over 4 million in 2016. In China and South Korea, cancers are a leading cause of death.

Moreover, a December 2015 McKinsey report, “MedTech in Asia: Committing at scale to raise standards of care for patients”, predicts that Asia will become the second highest medical technology market in the world by 2020 and account for a third of global sales by 2025.

Read more here.

From ValuePenguin via Yahoo! Finance:

Finance can be a headache even for startups that are already in operation. The most common of these pain points often has to do with cash flow. For example, many companies have to first spend the money on rent, staff and material costs to create their products before they receive even a dollar from their customers.

To exacerbate the situation, some customers will opt to pay 30 to 90 days after they have been invoiced. Startups could find themselves with a rapidly declining cash balance even while they are growing just because their immediate cash outlays are growing faster than cash inflows.

In such situations, startups and other SMEs can turn to invoice financing or short-term business loans to fill the gap between when they spend money and when they receive money.

Read more here.