New venture capital fund for Australian healthcare start-ups

BioScience Managers, a healthcare investment specialist based in Victoria, has announced the launch of a new venture capital fund for Australia’s innovative healthcare and biomedical research sectors.

The $50 million BioScience Managers Ventures I Fund is the first of a planned series of funds designed for the company’s Significant Investor Visa (SIV) applicants. It will be offered as a venture capital opportunity exclusively to clients of BT Investment Management.

“The fund will provide our growing number of SIV clients with the opportunity to invest in innovative earlier-stage healthcare solutions, underpinning Australia’s ability to meet the increasing healthcare needs of an ageing population,” said BTIM Group’s chief executive officer, Emilio Gonzalez. “This provides a winning solution for both our investors and healthcare innovation in Australia.”

BioScience Managers’ managing director, Jeremy Curnock Cook, said he is “confident we will see effective new healthcare products reach the market as a direct result of this new source of capital”. He added that small healthcare and biomedical companies are particularly suitable for venture capital investment because of the size of the opportunity and the high potential returns.

“You need high returns to match the higher risk, but with judicious selection, there is no reason why investors should not do very well out of this sort of investment,” he said.

BioScience Managers Chief Investment Officer Matt McNamara said the companies in the fund will be at an earlier stage than in the company’s other funds, “so we will help them to meet the challenges of developing management teams, adding regulatory and clinical trial expertise and being introduced to capital and international networks”.

However, he stressed that BioScience Managers will only choose investment opportunities that are high quality and have significant technological or market advantages. “Once they are identified, we remain closely involved in helping to commercialise these innovative discoveries,” he said.

Dr Anna Lavelle, the former CEO of national industry body AusBiotech, welcomed the launch of the fund, saying it is “a step change for earlier-stage companies and sorely needed in Australia”.

“Together with later-stage venture funding we now have a smooth continuum of capital access that will be of material benefit to many,” she said.