Barath and Radhika of Accel talk about investments in healthcare sector

We continue with the #INSIGHTSPodcast Series and in this episode, we focus on the healthcare sector and discuss opportunities and the market landscape using examples from the Accel portfolio. To talk about this exciting topic, We have Barath and Radhika, Principal and Senior Associate at Accel Partners, whose core focus investment areas are in Life sciences, medtech and digital health.

On this podcast, we discuss the healthcare landscape in India using examples from Accel's portfolio, and what to look for while building out a healthcare company from India:

Lifesciences

• What is life sciences - The model of an IP led life sciences company solving global problems.
• Mitra Biotech - Why did they choose to start in India?
• The solution to an age-old problem - How do you understand the effects of drugs on tumours without bombarding a patient with the drugs?
• Zumutor - Building a platform to develop molecules for improving drug delivery to cancer cells

Healthcare Delivery

• The problems with healthcare delivery in India
• Moving care back to the home - counterintuitive insight and how Portea plugs the gaps in the delivery space

Digital health

• Onco.com - using digital distribution to disrupt the current value chain and deliver better care for patients
• Using AI to deliver healthcare in the diagnostics space - How SigTuple uses digital distribution and AI to deliver healthcare and diagnose correctly.
• The Indian Advantage - Why healthcare is attractive in India
• Capital efficiency from being in India
• The 3x-5x advantage in capital required from building from India
• Talent, Infrastructure arbitrage from India - The Indian pharma story for next wave of life sciences
• Speeding things up - How India helps speed up development
• The regulatory advantage - lesser regulations for initial development of drugs
• Using the initial momentum and taking the drugs to more regulated markets for trials - the difficulty of trials in the Indian market
• Examples where the thesis on cost and time plays out
• The estimates from Axio - getting to market with 1/10th the capital and 60 percent of the time to get to market with a great product
• Setting the standards in India so the product goes global - no compromise on quality
• The healthcare business - things to consider while getting into the healthcare sector
• The trust process - building trust, and the time and effort it takes to build trust
• Importance of IP - having a good IP and using peer-reviewed publications for validation and marketing
• Patent portfolio and defensibility of patents - defending incremental IP and not infringing existing patents, and filing patents to get it out in the world
• The team - building a team as the company grows, and the expertise required; the differences between life sciences, and non-life science businesses
• The Indian story - the shift from communicable to chronic disease, infrastructure gap, mobile first country and the advantage technology provides in such an environment.

Anand Daniel is a seed/early stage venture investor with Accel Partners.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)