Nihar Parikh's 4Point0 Health Ventures bets $75 million on health tech

Entrepreneur turned venture capitalist Nihar Parikh has great expectations from India's healthcare start-up sector. And for a good reason. 

According to McKinsey, the global digital healthcare market is expected to reach $515 billion by 2024, up from $350 billion in 2019. India has been one of the fastest adopters of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), the internet of things (IoT), cloud computing, data analytics and robotics to provide better patient care and improve accessibility.  

To harness this growth, Parikh launched 4Point0 Health Ventures, a healthcare-focused fund, earlier this year. This was after his family business of ZCL Chemicals Limited was sold last March to private equity firm Advent International for Rs 2,000 crore.

4Point0 Health Ventures is a health tech-oriented company that will make early-stage investments in healthcare start-ups. While talking to Economic Times, Parikh stated that the family office would deploy about $75 million into the sector.

The company has funded platform Saveo, digital therapeutic start-up Fitterfly, elective surgery provider Glaymo Health, and healthcare digitisation service provider Eka Care to date . Parikh revealed that it would invest $1 million to $2 million in seed to Series B financing rounds, depending on the start-up's life cycle and growth potential. 

"When we started mapping the entire landscape of health tech companies in India, surprisingly, more than 98% of the firms were in the early stages, and only a handful had crossed Series B and above. In that, a majority were e-pharmacy firms which I don't consider health tech because those are ecommerce platforms," he said.

Indian start-ups raised around $19 billion in funding during the first half of 2022. Interestingly, several of the 78 funds launched or announced in H1 2022 focused on fintech and health tech.

Bertelsmann India Investments closed a VC fund of $ 500 million under Bertelsmann's Boost 25 strategy this year, while Mumbai-based IvyCap Ventures raised $261 million in the first close of its third venture capital fund in February 2022.  

In March, Tata Capital Healthcare Fund II, a PE arm of Tata Capital, announced the final closure of a $126 million fund to invest in healthcare and pharma start-ups in India. Eight Roads Ventures India closed its first health tech-focused fund at $250 million in May 2022, taking its total investment in India to $1.6 billion.