Siddarth Pai
Founding Partner, 3one4 Capital“Technology has gone from being a vertical feature to horizontal infrastructure that supports every facet of business. Companies that fail to adopt technology into their business will find themselves outmatched by their peers who have adopted tech. In healthcare especially technology plays an outsized role in discovery diagnosis and delivery and has proven itself in improving patient outcomes and increasing efficacy of overburdened healthcare infrastructure. There are almost no aspects of healthcare that technology cannot augment and any companies who are yet to adopt technology wont be able to compete in the new age.In the short-term health-tech will focus on consolidating the gains they have seen through COVID-19 and augmenting existing frameworks for reducing the physical touchpoints in the patient-doctor journey. Mitigating disease proliferation for metabolic diseases leveraging smart wearables for continuous monitoring and creating hospital level tech for home-use will drive the immediate healthtech innovation. Healthcare E-commerce has peaked in the current model with existing players concentrating on greater specialisations incorporating diagnostics into their offerings and integrating deeply into the healthcare ecosystem.In the long-term investments into new drug discovery platforms and means of diagnosing novel diseases and crunching the vaccinemedicine timelines from discovery to delivery will attract large billions of dollars in grants and investments.”
Dipanjan Basu
Partner & CFO, FiresideVentures“Technology Digital adoption and Innovation has become core to every business. We think its even more important in the Healthcare space. On one hand we would need innovative solution to chronic Conditions like Cancer Diabetes Heart Lungs Hypertension Stress Sleep etc. On the other hand these solutions needs to be democratized and made accessible and affordable to a large population. Digital reach and use of technology is the only solution. This thus presents a large opportunity to Direct to Consumer Companies who come up with such solutions.We see increased investments in the Health tech sector both in early and late stage. As per a recent Bain report healthcare and Healthtech Investments have increased 1.6X in 2020 over 2019. In the long term we see even more Investments in this sector.At Fireside we see the Direct to consumerholistic wellness and health ecosystemas a large opportunity impacting billions of people. Some of our Investments in this space is already seeing tremendous traction. These trends include - Preventive Disease Managementplatforms impacting large cross section of the Society with conditions such as Diabetes Heart and Lung health Women Hygiene Hypertension etc. Start ups likeFitterflyare disrupting the space using deep technology Analytics and AI to systematically reduce diabetic conditions and Start ups likeGynovedaare using deeply researched Ayurveda based products to address menstrual and other women hygiene related problems.Holistic wellness platformssuch asSarva Yogaare using Yoga as a means to build a wellness conscious life style and address concerns such as Stress Anxiety Sleep and overall fitness.Over the counter (OTC) Nutraceuticals companies such asWellbeingare using science backed deeply researched formulation to create daily consumable products to boost nutrient levels in human body and therefore boosting Immunity digestion hair and skin health sexual health etc.Forming healthy eating habits is another big shift which we see especially for Kids. Start ups likeSlurrp Farmare creating a food platform with alternate grains such as Millets which can revolutionize the way we consumer daily meals”
