Lithuanian Business Angels Network (LitBAN), together with Co-Investment Fund “Koinvesticinis Fondas” and Startup Lithuania, after  Startup Fair. Growth 2018 announced the first official investment in a Lithuanian startup. A unique investment of 100K EUR will go to Oxipit, a startup developing innovative diagnostic tools that allow to recognize cancer and other pathologies in radiograms using AI.

Oxipit, the winner of the investment, provides medical image analysis software which is now considered to be one of the leading medical innovations in Europe. Its ChestGlass is the first-to-market chest X-ray search solution that allows to find radiologically similar images in a given database and has been selected as one of the top projects for the 2018 Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) Innovation Challenge.

LitBAN, which made the investment, was launched in March of this year and has already made its first steps into building a wide network of investors and startups.

“Lithuania is one of the most vibrant countries in Europe for startups, and has been called Europe’s secret tech powerhouse. We aim to connect these startups with potential investors and to boost the growth of business innovation ecosystem in Lithuania,” said Gytenis Galkis, board member of LitBAN.

According to the CEO of “Koinvesticinis Fondas” Daiva Gerulyte, LitBAN members can invest in startups sooner than most investment funds, because they are using their own funds. Therefore, the network will be a significant help for startups that are still in the initial stages of development and can even motivate new startups to launch.

“We are glad to have a chance to give startup the opportunity to attract the investment during Startup Fair for the first time. Our collaboration with LitBAN and “Koinvesticinis fondas” enables Lithuanian ecosystem growth and opens more financing possibilities for Lithuanian startups, so we expect more investments in the future,” said Roberta Rudokienė, Head of Startup Lithuania.

The opportunity to compete for the joint LitBAN and Co-Investment Fund’s investment was granted to over 50 best startups that took part at Startup Fair. Growth 2018 Pitch Battle in Vilnius earlier this year. Eight of them were invited to participate in the final stage of the project.

“We felt LitBAN‘s enthusiasm, and it was truly motivating. Even though our project needs more funding, we are now certain that we will succeed to gather a great team of professionals and overcome all the difficulties,” said Gediminas Peksys, CEO of Oxipit. ”Several decades ago chest X-ray technology has moved from photographic film to digital. By now, healthcare institutions have archived millions of images in databases which are virtually unused. Today, with excellent tools long available for general information search, radiology is ready for another step forward. The novel possibility to query radiology databases not only by keywords or study IDs but also by full images will permanently alter the radiological workstation functionality expectations.”

(Oxipit Won the First Offical Investment of LitBAN. Photo by Event Organisers Archive)

Half of the investment was collected during LitBAN’s Event Funding Training Program (EFTP) that consisted of workshops and startup evaluation training sessions for investors, while the rest is covered by Co-Investment Fund.

Local and international startups that are interested in being selected should apply on LitBAN’s page.