W Health Ventures to take bigger, bolder bets in healthcare: Pankaj Jethwani

The firm announced the first closing of Fund II on Thursday at ₹550 crore is targeted ₹630 crore. Jethwani said the fund is about 87% subscribed and the firm hopes to announce final closing shortly.

W Health Ventures is already deploying capital from its second fund, with its first company, Everhope Oncology, launching in March. Everhope was founded in partnership with hospital chain Narayana Health to reimagine cancer care in India.

“The patient experience in oncology is the same in India as it was 20 years ago,” Jethwani said, explaining that quality cancer care is still concentrated in certain centers of excellence and specialized areas that most patients cannot access.

“Most Indian patients with cancer are receiving a fairly outdated treatment. What this platform enables us to do is work with leading oncologists, medical oncologists and the like to not only build high-quality centers and fill them with patients, but also deliver an extremely high-quality patient experience,” he said.

Everhope uses artificial intelligence to accompany cancer patients and assist doctors on their individual journeys, Jethwani said, adding that the system needed a ‘shake-up’.

They are building greenfield and brownfield centers for Everhope, starting from Maharashtra, Gujarat and Delhi, and aim to reach 30,000 cancer patients this year.

According to Jethwani, similar upheaval is needed in many other areas of the healthcare industry.

The fund explores opportunities in longevity, modern preventive health, geriatrics and chronic pain management.

“…India is leading in many ways with sectors like financial services or consumer, but in many sectors, think about deep tech, biotech innovation, healthcare; we are 15-20 years behind,” Jethwani said.

“Experience in oncology also applies to many other fields, whether it is pain management, obesity management or mental health… the opportunity we are targeting is a generational opportunity,” he said.

Basic approach

W Health Ventures sticks to its core approach of identifying white space and then partnering with founders to build a company. The firm plans to launch and scale 8 to 10 new companies over the next four years. ₹30-50 crore per brood.

Jethwani said starting a company gave them time to research and design companies from scratch to make bold investments, looking to the East and West for inspiration and to anticipate and avoid mistakes.

“The generational opportunity for us is to have a time machine with a plane ticket,” he said. “You fly to China or the U.S. You know what the future of healthcare delivery might look like.”

The firm’s focus for all its companies is healthcare, its sole specialty in India, and B2B AI-enabled services in the India-US corridor.

Fund I companies include Nivaan (chronic pain), BeatO (diabetes), ElevateNow (obesity), BabyMD (pediatrics) and Mylo (parenting) in India, as well as cross-border companies such as Wysa (AI mental health services) and Reveal HealthTech (AI transformation services), all of which have raised external growth capital.

“Fund 1 companies serve approximately 25 million patients today, we expect to reach one billion lives in the next few decades,” Jethwani said.

Mint W Health Venture reported its first fund II closing in July.