MUMBAI
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Early-stage healthcare-focused enterprise capital agency W Well being Ventures is in search of bolder bets with its second fund, constructing corporations from the bottom up in areas like oncology, longevity, and persistent ache administration, managing associate Pankaj Jethwani informed Mint in an interview.
The agency on Thursday introduced the preliminary shut of its Fund II at ₹550 crore, aiming for ₹630 crore. The fund is about 87% subscribed, and the agency hopes to announce the ultimate shut shortly, Jethwani stated.
W Well being Ventures has already been deploying capital from its second fund, with its first firm, Everhope Oncology, launched in March. Everhope was launched in partnership with the hospital chain Narayana Well being to reimagine most cancers care in India.
“The affected person expertise in oncology is identical as if it was 20 years in the past in India,” stated Jethwani, explaining that high quality most cancers care continues to be concentrated in particular centres of excellence and personal areas which aren’t accessible to most sufferers.
“Most Indian sufferers with most cancers are getting pretty dated therapy. What this platform permits us to do is to work with main oncosurgeons and medical oncologists and the wish to not solely construct high-quality centres and fill them up with sufferers, however present a particularly high-quality affected person expertise,” he stated.
Everhope is leveraging AI to function a companion for most cancers sufferers and help docs on their particular person journeys, stated Jethwani, including that the system wants a ‘shake-up’.
They’re constructing greenfield and brownfield centres beginning with Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Delhi for Everhope and goal to achieve 30,000 most cancers sufferers this 12 months.
Key Takeaways
- Fund II has reached a primary shut of ₹550 crore, focusing on a complete of ₹630 crore.
- Concentrate on firm creation over collection A/B investing.
- Plans to seed 8–10 startups with ₹30–50 crore every over the subsequent 4 years.
- Oncology, longevity, persistent ache, and AI-enabled B2B companies.
- Goals to develop from 25 million sufferers presently served by Fund I to 1 billion lives over 20 years.
An identical shake-up is required in a number of different areas in healthcare, in line with Jethwani.
The fund is exploring alternatives in longevity, fashionable preventive well being, geriatrics, and persistent ache administration.
“…with sectors like monetary companies or client, India is main in some ways, however in lots of sectors, consider deeptech, biotech innovation, healthcare—we’re 15-20 years behind,” stated Jethwani.
“What the expertise is with oncology is true for a lot of different areas like ache administration, weight problems administration, or psychological well being…the chance we’re focusing on is a generational alternative,” he stated.
Floor-up strategy
W Well being Ventures is sticking to its ground-up strategy, of figuring out white areas after which partnering with founders to construct an organization. The agency plans to construct and scale 8 to 10 new corporations over the subsequent 4 years, investing ₹30-50 crore in every incubation.
Jethwani stated that firm creation offers them the time to analysis and design corporations from scratch to take daring bets, and that they appear to the East and West for inspiration, in addition to for errors to anticipate and keep away from.
“The generational alternative for us is we now have a time machine, which is a flight ticket,” he stated. “You fly to China or the US. You already know what the way forward for healthcare supply can seem like.”
The agency’s focus for all its corporations is single-speciality well being in India and B2B AI-enabled companies within the India-US hall.
Its Fund I corporations embrace Nivaan (persistent ache), BeatO (diabetes), ElevateNow (weight problems), BabyMD (paediatrics), and Mylo (parenting) in India, together with cross-border corporations like Wysa (AI psychological well being companies) and Reveal HealthTech (AI transformation companies), which have all raised exterior development capital.
“Fund 1 corporations immediately serve about 25 million sufferers, we’re hoping that we’ll get to a billion lives within the subsequent couple of a long time,” stated Jethwani.
Mint reported on W Well being Enterprise’s preliminary fund II shut in July.