April - 2014 - issue > VC talk

Medical Science is yet Unexplored to its Potential

Mohan Kumar

Executive Director- Norwest Venture Partners India

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Forward

Norwest Venture Partners is a multi-stage venture and growth equity investment firm that has partnered with entrepreneurs to build great businesses for more than 50 years. The firm manages over $3.7 billion in capital and funded over 500 companies since inception.

Existing enterprise software had originated some 20 + years back that has been purely transaction oriented. Currently, the enterprise software is a drawback, as it is unable to meet major needs like data driven decision making, and enhanced customer engagement to name a few. With the advent of advanced technology like cloud, tablets and mobility, which are based on completely different IT architecture, when implemented have resulted in enhanced customer engagement, competitive intelligence and enabled data driven decision making. This is proving very beneficial for all sectors.

In India, the IT investments in sectors like retail, healthcare,manufacturing, financial services and SMBs are on an average one percent, but it needs to catch upto five percent as companies scale up. In healthcare domain, the investments need to be scaled up to three percent from the current one, which is even low than one percent so as to enhance efficiency and customer satisfaction. We at Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) focus on investing in technologies like SaaS/Analytics/Customer Engagement in verticals like retail, healthcare, education and financial services.

A New Wave of Medical Technologies

Some of the latest areas that I am following are in personalized medicine, medical technology and intelligent robots. This is the next frontier where a lot of new companies are being formed, which will be extending human life through a combination of genetics, personalized medicine and stem cell technology.