Norwest Venture Partners has invested $1.5 million (Rs 9.65 crore), each, in two health-tech startups, said a top executive of the multi-stage private investment firm.
Mohan Kumar, a partner at Norwest, told VCCircle that the investment in Multiplier Solutions and ABI Health would subsequently result in setting up of a single specialised healthcare platform. The merger of the two companies is expected to be complete in 12-18 months.
Multiplier Solutions was founded by Vikram Kumar and Saumya Prakash in 2013. The Hyderabad-based startup works with seven leading healthcare chains and pharmaceuticals companies in India, the UAE, Oman and Iraq. It offers a product platform that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide improved diagnostics and predicts clinical outcomes to its users.
Bangalore-based ABI Health was also launched in the same year by Balaji Sundarajan and Ajit Veerappan. Its services include development of clinical applications, healthcare mobile applications, cloud applications, business intelligence and analytics solutions, patient portals and consumer health applications.
The managements of both companies have already started collaborating on various projects.
Earlier in the day, Kumar had told The Economic Times that the merger will be a definitive step. “We can do much more together, as one single unit. There’s a much larger game to play, and a much larger problem can be solved,†the report quoted Kumar.
Norwest’s investments
The multi-stage venture and growth equity investment firm is investing in India out of the $1.2-billion global fund it had raised last year.
It invests in companies across a wide range of sectors. Its portfolio includes technology companies working on cloud and IT infrastructure, internet and consumer, and software as a service. Besides, it also bets on business services, financial services, consumer and healthcare firms. Norwest is stage-agnostic and backs firms at the seed and Series A levels to late-stage venture and growth equity.
Its healthcare bets include diagnostics firm Thyrocare, which was listed on stock exchanges last year, woman and child specialty hospital chain OVUM Hospitals, medical devices firm Perfint, and cloud-based healthcare information technology company Attune.
Norwest had also participated in Online food ordering startup Swiggy.com’s Series E round led by South African technology group Naspers.