Eight Roads launches $400m China healthcare fund
Fidelity-backed Eight Roads has launched a China healthcare fund with a corpus of $400 million, which will invest across the industry value chain and in areas related to critical diseases.
The vehicle – called Eight Roads China Healthcare Fund V – appears to be the firm’s second focusing on the sector in China. The first launched in 2017 with commitments of $250 million. Last year, Eight Roads strengthened its healthcare team with the recruitment of Xin Liu as a partner. She previously worked for Greater Pacific Capital.
The new fund will concentrate on early-stage investment opportunities in therapeutics, medical technology, healthcare services, and digital health.
Eight Roads claims to have backed more than 50 healthcare companies in China. They include drug developers WuXi AppTec, Innovent Biologics, Hua Medicine, Adagene, OcuMension, and Insilico Medicine, med-tech players EyeBright and Nanos Medical, healthcare services providers DeltaHealth and Gushengtang, and digital health businesses Medbanks and MediTrust.
WuXi AppTec, Innovent Biologics, Hua Medicine, OcuMension, and EyeBright have gone on to complete IPOs in mainland China, Hong Kong, or the US. Insilico, which leverages artificial intelligence (AI) technology to speed up the drug development process, recently closed a $255 million Series C round led by Warburg Pincus.
“The launch of our latest healthcare fund reflects our confidence in the capacity of China's innovation and enormous opportunity China holds as its healthcare market continues to mature. The new fund will be supported by the unrivaled reach and resources of our powerful global ecosystem, which includes our sister venture arm in the US, F-Prime Capital," said Daniel Auerbach, senior managing partner and head of global ventures at Eight Roads, in a statement.
Eight Roads, formerly known as Fidelity Growth Partners, spun out from Fidelity International in 2019. It often invests alongside its sister entity F-Prime, formerly Fidelity Biosciences, which is also backed by Fidelity.
The firm is active in Japan, India, Europe, and the US, as well as China. It has invested in more than 200 healthcare companies globally, of which 34 have gone public.
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