The firm aims to build and scale 8-10 new companies over the next four years, investing Rs 30-50 crore in each incubation.
“With Fund II, we plan to take larger and bolder bets on company creation,” Pankaj Jethwani, managing partner at W Health Ventures, told ET.
Founded in 2021, W Health Ventures builds healthcare companies from scratch by partnering with founders, clinicians and operators, identifying underserved clinical gaps and supporting execution through a shared platform model.
Jethwani said despite India building cutting-edge companies in consumer tech and financial services, healthcare remains 20 years behind.
“That gap felt like a generational opportunity,” he said. “We believed foundational healthcare companies should exist in these sectors because they address very large patient pain points globally, but were missing in India.”
From its first fund, W Health has invested in companies such as Nivaan (chronic pain), BeatO (diabetes), ElevateNow (obesity), BabyMD (paediatrics) and Mylo (parenting) in India. It has also made bets in cross-border ventures such as Wysa, which offers AI-led mental health services, and Reveal HealthTech, offering AI transformation services.
The second fund has already begun deploying capital. Its first investment, Everhope Oncology, is being built in partnership with Narayana Health as a national oncology platform focused on integrated cancer care. The firm is also incubating a US-based psychiatry platform in stealth mode aimed at advanced treatments for patients with treatment-resistant depression, Jethwani said.
Speaking about the opportunity in AI-led healthcare services, he said the US-India corridor scope is massive. “There is $30-40 billion in healthcare trade between India and the US. The US healthcare system spends $5 trillion annually, and roughly $1 trillion of that is tied to archaic workflows that are manual, labour-intensive, and low quality.”
Currently, the fund is focusing on building companies in single-specialty healthcare models in India such as oncology, elderly care, longevity and preventive health, geriatrics and chronic pain management.
