Singapore-based Jungle Ventures said it has merged HealthXCapital – a city based-fund in which it is an anchor investor – with itself to kickstart its healthtech foray, according to ETtech report.
Following this move, the $20 million HealthXCapital — with investments in Red Health (formerly StanPlus), Medfin, and THB — will now join Jungle Ventures’ portfolio. The latter is currently investing out of its fourth fund, which boasts a $600 million corpus.
Two investment professionals from HealthXCapital’s team – Seemant Jauhari, managing partner and Jimit Patel, senior associate – will be joining Jungle Ventures too, Jauhari told ET. Jauhari also said that he has been made a partner for the healthcare vertical.
“Moving forward, the HealthXCapital (HXC) team will lead new investments only through Jungle Ventures,” Jungle Ventures’ founding partner Amit Anand told ET. He declined to comment on the financial terms of the merger.
Jungle Ventures invests in early- to growth-stage companies in Southeast Asia and India. Its portfolio includes Moglix, Livspace, Builder.ai and Atomberg.
“The HXC team is graduating from having a smaller pot of capital and being able to only help fewer companies to now working on a larger platform and going after the same spaces and doing much more there,” Jungle Ventures’ founding partner Amit Anand told ET. HXC has completely deployed its $20 million corpus.
Apart from Jungle Ventures, Apollo Hospitals is also a limited partner in HXC. On whether the LPs will retain their positions in Jungle Ventures, Anand said, “Not really. Some of them will decide whether they want to become an LP. We are not also raising a new fund… what happens with those LPs and how we collaborate will play out in the future.”
Members of HXC’s advisory board will also start working with Jungle Ventures, he added.
Jungle Ventures has currently deployed less than half of its $600 million fund. The team has grown from 16-17 members in late 2022, to about 40 people now. In June, the firm elevated Arpit Beri as partner in the firm, and is planning to add more senior talent in the next month or so, Anand said. Jungle Ventures’ makes 6-8 investments a year.
In terms of differences between how Jauhari invested at HXC versus Jungle Ventures, he said the new investments will be focussed around the venture growth stage rather than early stage, “which would be the sweet spot of Series B, typically, and we will also be doing larger cheques. The geographical focus remains fairly intact in India and Southeast Asia.”
Jungle Ventures’ healthtech thesis will be more broad-based across subsectors within healthcare, over and above HXC’s focus on digital health. “Now, we will also look at hotly pursued spaces including mental health, medtech manufacturing and supply chain distribution,” Jauhari said.
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