East Ventures Raises IDR 472 Billion in Management Funds Specifically for Healthcare Startups

East Ventures announced that it is raising new managed funds of $30 million (around Rp. 472 billion) specifically to invest in startups healthcare. The fundraising process for the "Healthcare Fund" is currently underway and is expected to be completed soon.

Co-founder & Managing Partner of East Ventures Willson Cuaca explained that this managed fund is specifically dedicated to funding startups healthcare and vertical derivatives for the initial stages. His party has received a number of commitments from LP with their identities kept secret.

“From the industrial side healthcare right now, it's exactly what EVs did when they first started. No one yet. So what we do, invest, create value, invest again, hopefully the ecosystem healthcare it could be good," he said to a number of media in Jakarta, (18/10).

However, Willson couldn't estimate it yet ticket sizes funds that will be invested in each startup. He reasoned that his party was still trying because this industry was a little different, there were lots of regulations so they couldn't make products that could be used straight away.

"So the product development takes longer, the risks definitely take longer to develop fundIt has to be special and cannot be combined. All investments in startups have the heaviest [risk]. product-market-fit. "We don't know whether the [product] we are working on will be accepted by the market or not because it all starts from a hypothesis."

This is fund second thematic which was created by East Ventures. Last week, the VC announced a fund managed by "East Ventures South Korea fund in partnership with SV Investment" with a target fund of $100 million.

"Because the [digital] infrastructure in Indonesia is already good, East Ventures is ready to expand [build other ecosystems]. We want an ecosystem healthcare in Indonesia it is possible accessible, cost effective and the deterrence is effective.”

Before this fund was formed, East Ventures had been actively investing in startups and companies healthcare in South East Asia. In its portfolio there are 30 startups healthcare, some of which are Mesh Bio, AMILI, Aevice Health, Etana, NalaGenetics, and Nusantics, both of which work in genomics.

Simultaneously with this announcement, East Ventures also provided a donation to the Biomedical & Genome Science Initiative (BGSi), an initiative of the Indonesian Ministry of Health to provide precision medicine services for the community in August 2022, providing needs sequencing in the form of reagents and consumables worth more than IDR 1 billion.

According to Willson, his party is contributing to the government's efforts to map new diseases that can be detected early through a database of Indonesian samples. “Countries that can do this can be more precise in preventing disease than when the disease has just been treated. If we can do this, it will be leapfrog Very large."

The collection of genomic samples will involve the Nalagenetics team supported by equipment from the Ministry of Health.

In February 2023, East Ventures launched the white paper "Genomics: Leapfrogging into the Indonesian healthcare future". This white paper is the result of collaboration between East Ventures and the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Indonesia, which provides a comprehensive understanding of the role of genomics which has the potential to improve the health service system in Indonesia.