Akna Medical Pvt. Ltd, which operates a healthcare supply chain, has raised $7 million (around Rs 54 crore) in its Series A funding from LGT Lightstone Aspada.
The Gurugram-based medical startup aims to invest $20 million over the next two years to scale up operations and acquisitions across the country.
Saurabh Pandey, co-founder and CEO at Akna Medical, told VCCircle that the investment firm has committed to invest more in the startup based on future milestones.
The investment, which was closed just three days back, reaffirmed the need for a robust supply chain to support the country's healthcare system, Pandey said. “There was no question mark over the deal per se because of COVID-19,” he added.
Akna Medical was founded by Pandey and Mahadevan Narayanamoni in 2018. Mayank Kapoor, Shaunak Joshi and Varun Vohra later came on board as co-founders. The startup offers full procurement solutions to hospital chains and mid-sized standalone hospitals with the help of its in-house technology and analytics tool -- SmartBUY.
It currently has a presence in six locations including NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. It has a portfolio of over 1,000 products including surgical and pharmaceutical.
Last year in July, the startup had raised $500,000 in angel funding.
Before launching Akna Medical, Pandey was director-healthcare at investment bank Equirus. Previously, he was a chief operating officer at Matrix Partners-backed Mewar Hospital and private equity firm TVM Capital-backed fertility firm Bourn Hall.
Co-founder Narayanamoni, a graduate of IIT Madras, is a Senior Advisor at TPG Capital.
Health-tech investments
The broader health-technology segment has seen a significant increase in investor attention.
Just last month, startups in the space that raised funding include women’s healthcare platform Zealthy and medical healthcare records platform MedCords.
Unicorn India Ventures also made its debut bet on Sascan Meditech Pvt. Ltd, a startup that provides automated solutions for non-intrusive oral cancer screening, after announcing its first close of a new fund.
Mumbai-based Qure.ai Technologies Pvt. Ltd raised $16 million (Rs 115 crore) in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital.
Healthcare data analytics startup Innovaccer Inc. raised nearly Rs 500 crore in Series C funding from marquee investors including Steadview Capital, Tiger Global and WestBridge Capital in February.
According to a VCCircle survey, health-tech is the most preferred sub-domain for venture capitalists this year.
LGT
Last year, Swiss investor LGT acquired Aspada, an India-focused impact investment fund, to expand its impact investing platform LGT Lightstone. It became LGT Lightstone Aspada and has been actively investing since then.
It made at least three investments last month as it backed SmartCoin Financials Pvt. Ltd, Arya Collateral Warehousing Services Pvt. Ltd.
The firm typically invests in the range of $3-5 million at the lower end and $30 million at the top end, Aspada’s Thomas Hyland said in his previous interaction to VCCircle following the acquisition of the fund by Swiss investor LGT.
