Akumentis Healthcare Ltd.
Venture capital and growth equity investment firm Sequoia Capital is to invest Rs 125 crore (approximately $19 million) in pharmaceutical company Akumentis Healthcare Ltd for a small equity stake in the company.
The proposed investment has been approved by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), the nodal body monitoring foreign investment in the country, early this year.
An email to Sequoia Capital and Akumentis seeking further details on the investment did not elicit any response by the time of filing this article.
Founded in 2010, Akumentis Healthcare operates as a subsidiary of Akums Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Ltd. Akumentis focuses on niches in women’s healthcare— infertility management, gynaecology, obstetrics and osteoporosis treatment – and is backed by a network of seven manufacturing units and research and development facilities across India.
Sequoia, one of the more active VC firms in the country, has backed around a dozen firms in the healthcare domain. The bulk of these are in healthcare delivery or services space.
Last month it invested $20 million in Bangalore-based high-end diagnostics services company MedGenome Labs Pvt Ltd in its Series B round of funding.
Product and pharma companies that it has backed include Celon Labs and Paras Pharma, a maker of FMCG and OTC healthcare products, which was sold to Reckitt Benckiser in 2011.
It has become pretty active in the pharma space over the last one year investing in names like La Renon Healthcare Pvt Ltd, Curatio Healthcare India Pvt Ltd and Koye Pharmaceuticals Pvt Ltd.
