SINGAPORE: Fresh off a strong market debut on the Singapore Exchange (SGX), medtech firm UltraGreen.ai is well-positioned to use Singapore as its base as it seeks to grow in Asia, said its CEO.

Speaking to CNA on Wednesday (Dec 3), the day of its initial public offering (IPO), Mr Ravinder Sajwan said Singapore was the natural place for UltraGreen to go public.

“We have large growth segments in Asia we want to launch, and having a company based in Singapore gives us credibility from a local perspective,” he said.

“I personally am a PR (permanent resident) in Singapore. Our family office is Singapore-owned. So our strategy was, Singapore is our home - we wanted to do it here.”

The firm, which specialises in supplying fluorescence-guided surgery tools and indocyanine green (ICG) dyes, surged as much as 10 per cent above its IPO price of US$1.45, opening at around US$1.60.

The company raised about US$400 million, making it Singapore’s largest non-REIT (real estate investment trust) IPO since 2017 and valuing it at around US$1.7 billion.

“We call ourselves UltraGreen because we have taken your blood, turned it green and applied AI to it,” Mr Sajwan said.

KEEPING SURGEONS AT THE CENTRE

Mr Sajwan said the company’s growth has come from working in partnership with surgeons.

“Most top fluorescent guided surgeons in the world work with us … They do a lot of clinical work to tell us how this product performs in different applications, we use that data then to decide what markets to go after.”

Surgeons also shape UltraGreen’s software development.

“They will also tell us what is missing in the market … that allows us to then decide what we need to fill the gaps with in software,” said Mr Sajwan.

“Surgeons give us great clinical data. Then we have software which goes in and adds more precision to it, and you create adoption that way.”

This strategy has paid off, despite the healthcare sector’s generally slow adoption of new products, he added.

The company has grown from selling 20,000 vials of ICG dye in 2016 to around 1 million last year.

UltraGreen is also building an artificial intelligence-powered platform to help analyse real-time data during procedures.

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