Ventiur will invest BRL 20 million in health startups

With the perspective of strengthening its performance and helping health institutions and startups to face the challenges of transformation in this sector, the accelerator Ventiur has just closed partnerships with Hospital Mãe de Deus and Hospital Ernesto Dornelles (HED).

The goal is to invest up to BRL 20 million in about 15 health startups over the next three years, through a vehicle that does not involve resources from hospitals. Investments should take place from April 2023.

“The biggest challenge for any startup is to validate its business model. We’ve seen too many healthtechs die from not having access to healthcare providers to validate their solutions. So, we decided to invert the process: to set up the investment vehicle and create a network of partner hospitals in the main health hubs in the country”, reveals the chairman of the Board of Directors of Ventiur, Carlos Klein. Born in 2013 and with nationwide operations, Ventiur Aceleradora has already evaluated more than 3 thousand startups in all Brazilian states and invested in more than 70 innovative businesses, valued at around BRL 300 million.

The manager mentions that the main focus will be the cities of São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Recife, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Brasília. “We are also looking for operators and even municipalities that want to participate in this initiative”, he adds.

The prospecting of startups is already underway. In October, within the Hospital Med fair, in Recife, the Battle of Startups was held. With the signing of this agreement, the two hospitals in Porto Alegre join a network that already includes the participation of Hospital de Clínicas de Recife (PE). There, the agreement was signed on November 17. Conversations with hospitals in Rio Grande do Sul began at South Summit, in early 2022.

“We still haven’t talked to the hospitals about their specific demands. They have different degrees of maturity, but we are going to provide a diagnostic methodology for the hospitals and, with these pains mapped, do a roadshow to attract startups based on the needs observed by the institutions”, says Klein.

For Hospital Mãe de Deus, which has already made connections with different startups, this is yet another opportunity to seek better solutions for patients. “We believe that fostering a culture of innovation means generating value both for those who develop these projects and for those who encourage them. When we offer hospital environments to test and validate these proposals, we are investing in the possibility of finding innovative solutions that further qualify health management and promotion”, analyzes Diego Ramires, head of Innovation at Associação Educadora São Carlos (AESC), which maintains the HMD .

At Ernesto Dornelles Hospital, the partnership takes place through the Health Innovation and Technology Center (CitS), created at the end of 2019 with the aim of generating solutions that add value to care, optimizing processes. “The partnership is in line with the CitS strategy, evolving open innovation through collaboration and complementarity, delivering a better experience to the patient”, highlights Geraldo Aguiar, HED’s Project and Innovation manager.

The seed for the creation of an investment vehicle to provide resources in this sector came from a problem felt at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). The teaching institution revealed to Ventiur that it had a large scientific production in the area of ​​health, but it was unable to convert this into business.

From then on, an agreement was signed with UFRGS, on December 28, 2021, which became the starting point for building the investment vehicle in health startups.

The Dean of Innovation and Institutional Relations at UFRGS, Geraldo Pereira Jotz, mentions that the university has a large portfolio of research products in areas such as nursing, dentistry, human and veterinary medicine. According to Jotz, Ventiur will be an important link in viewing these issues and transforming what is being worked on in the UFRGS laboratories into possible businesses.

“The big bottleneck has always been the health area. Researchers in these areas had a greater role in developing their work related to research, technology and innovation. I believe that the health sector has to be provoked within the university, more and more. And that’s why we opened this door. So that they could enter our laboratories and envision promising projects”, he explains.

Born in 2013 and with nationwide operations, Ventiur Aceleradora has already evaluated more than 3 thousand startups in all Brazilian states and invested in more than 70 innovative businesses, valued at around BRL 300 million.