Barcelona-based VC firm Nina Capital has reached the first close of its third fund, of €50m, to back early-stage healthtech founders in Europe, the US, Canada, Israel and Australia. It tells Sifted that more than a third (at least €16.66m) has been committed by LPs — which include Seven Two Partners, family offices and high-net worth individuals from the US & Europe.
The firm plans to invest in 25 companies from the fund; 60% will be based in Europe and the rest in the other geographies it’s targeting. Marta Zanchi, Nina Capital’s founder and managing partner, tells Sifted that ”historically, the United States takes the lion’s share of that 40%.”
Nina Capital’s strategy and track record
The firm started raising its third fund at the end of September last year, and is targeting a final close by the end of 2025.
It’ll write cheques between €250k-1.5m into pre-seed to Series A companies, with 60% of the fund being kept for follow-on investments.
As with the VC’s previous funds it’ll look to take between 8-10% ownership in the startups it invests in — sometimes a little bit more, Zanchi says.
More than 80% of the pre-seed startups Nina Capital invested in out of its first fund went on to raise seed funding; the companies it invested in out of its second fund grew revenues more than 4x in the two years after Nina invested.
Its portfolio includes more than 50 companies. Europe-based investments include Copenhagen-based Neurescue, a cardiovascular device manufacturer; and Oxford-based Ultromics, which offers an AI-powered platform for heart failure detection.
Zanchi says the fund’s investment strategy for its third fund will remain largely unchanged compared to previous vehicles.
Which companies does it want to back?
Nina Capital has three core areas in which it invests: companies solving problems across diagnostics, medical devices and clinician training; healthcare infrastructure; and clinical pathways and operational efficiency in hospitals.
“We want to bring in technological solutions to help this industry function better,” Zanchi says, adding that she’s interested in startups helping healthcare businesses “do more with less.”
Companies in those sectors fall into a few buckets. Some are working on automation — and “making sure that manual tasks and care gaps are filled by technology where possible,” she tells Sifted. Last year, the firm backed Hamburg-based Mindpeak, which automates visual diagnosis to increase the accuracy of cancer diagnoses.
Other companies in its portfolio working on automating processes to improve healthcare outcomes include Berlin-based Noah Labs and Barcelona-based Methinks Software. The firm also backed companies working on “simulation,” predicting where resources will be needed in the future and shuffling people inside the organisation accordingly.
Nina Capital is also keen on medical devices.
“Don’t think about the traditional, old-fashioned medtech,” Zanchi says. “Think about the next generation of…data driven medical devices that are coming to the market,” such as AI-powered devices which more accurately diagnose and monitor conditions than previous technology could.
An example in the firm’s portfolio is Genève-based Earlysight, which is developing devices to non-invasively monitor white blood cells and detect eye conditions in patients.
Zanchi says the company is also keen to back startups focused on underserved populations. London-based Adora is an example of this — the company provides menopause support services for women. So too is Berlin-based Lillian Care, which establishes hybrid primary care in underserved regions in Germany.
Nina Capital has already made its first investment from its third fund, into Stanford-based mental health platform for students, Sonar Mental Health. It has two more deals in its pipeline for early 2025, Zanchi says.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/exclusive-nina-capitals-new-e50m-fund-sets-sights-on-early-stage-healthtechs/
