A life sciences nonprofit has awarded Richmond lab equipment company Grenova with its Startup of the Year award.
The Sales and Marketing Professionals in Science (SAMPS) organization, which connects and empowers sales and marketing professionals in life science and applied research, recently presented the award at a ceremony in San Diego.
“We are proud to be named the SAMPS Startup of the Year, as it calls attention to the significant economic and environmental impact we’ve made since our inception,” Ali Safavi, founder and CEO of Grenova, said in a statement.
It has been quite the year for Grenova, which manufactures technology that washes and sterilizes devices like pipette tips used in diagnostic testing, allowing them to be reused rather than thrown away. Safavi said in his statement the company is responsible for more than 1.2 billion pipette tips being washed and reused, and that the award demonstrates the industry is embracing sustainability.
In March, the company sold a majority stake to Peloton Equity, a Greenwich, Connecticut, private equity firm. Terms of the deal were not announced, but founder and CEO Ali Safavi said it created a “stronger partnership” to support the company’s mission. The Hamilton Lane Impact Fund II and Morgan Stanley AIP Private Markets, both of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, also participated in the deal.
Safavi told Richmond Inno earlier this year the company had around 60 employees but had grown 800% over the past two years. The company was founded in 2014 and has been boosted in recent years by increased testing needs created by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In addition to winning the Startup of the Year award, earlier this month Grenova was named Sustainable Product of the Year Award at the Lab Innovations Conference in Birmingham, England, and was recently short-listed by SelectScience as a finalist for its award honoring impact on sustainability in life sciences.
