B Capital closes US-Asia healthcare fund on $500m
US and Asia-focused VC firm B Capital has closed its first dedicated sector fund, collecting USD 500m for investments in healthcare.
It comes six weeks after the investor closed its third flagship fund, including companion vehicles, with USD 2.1bn in commitments. The firm raised USD 360m for its debut fund in 2018 and USD 820m for a sophomore vehicle two years later. Assets under management stand at USD 6.3bn.
The healthcare fund is led by Robert Mittendorff, a general partner and head of healthcare at B Capital. He is a medical doctor by training. The mandate is to invest in “category-defining” companies in areas such as digital health and biotech.
"We are witnessing unprecedented innovation across the healthcare landscape. Technological advancements in biology, AI [artificial intelligence], and automation are transforming the industry, with business models seeing the convergence of traditional players in novel ways,” Mittendorff said in a statement
“This moment presents a unique opportunity for B Capital to leverage our dedicated healthcare capital and active investment strategy to find and support companies advancing the healthcare sector.”
B Capital is best known for being set up by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and Raj Ganguly, previously of Bain Capital and Velos Capital. Asia was always a significant part of the agenda. A Singapore office opened in tandem with the firm's US bases in 2015. There are now also teams in Beijing and Hong Kong, while India and Indonesia have been flagged as areas of expansion.
There are currently about 30 portfolio companies classified as healthcare or “bio IT.” They include drugstore portal PharmEasy and wellness products retailer Mojocare, both India-based, as well as Chinese life sciences R&D platform Aurora and Hong Kong-based drug discovery start-up Insilico Medicine.
The main driver of healthcare digitalisation in Asia is a fundamental gap between supply and demand; Indonesia and India, for example, rank near the bottom globally in terms of doctors per capita, with fewer than one doctor per 1,000 people. This is in addition to advances in data-based diagnostics and pandemic-related changes in patient behaviour in areas such as telemedicine.
Recent VC fundraising targeting this space includes Eight Roads Ventures launching its first dedicated healthcare and life sciences fund for India with a corpus of USD 250m. This coincided with MDI Ventures, the corporate VC arm of state-controlled Telkom Indonesia, setting up a USD 20m growth-stage healthcare fund in partnership with local vaccine maker Bio Farma.
Meanwhile, HealthQuad, an India-focused venture investor backed by sector PE firm Quadria Capital, has closed its second fund on USD 162m, more than twice the original target. Quadria itself highlighted a growing interest in tech-oriented deals upon the launch of its third flagship healthcare fund, which is targeting USD 1bn.
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