BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, the corporate venturing unit of US medical centres, has invested in India-based healthcare services provider Wellspring Healthcare’s series A round as its first deal outside of North America.
Alongside BlueCross in the consortium providing R20.5 crore ($4.5m) to Wellspring are corporate venturing peer Reliance Venture Asset Management and venture capital firm Catamaran.
Wellspring will use the money to create a chain of Healthspring Community Medical clinics initially in Mumbai.
Paul Brown, manager of theBlueCross venture fund at SandBox Industries, by email said: "We’re not pursuing international deals per se through the two Blue Cross Blue Shield funds we manage, but this one was exceptional. A really talented, Harvard-trained Indian founder who previously worked in Bain Capital’s Mumbai office, plus a really interesting business model. Great co-investors, too.
Myca, another one of our portfolio companies, is based in Quebec, Canada. The others are all US-based. In short, we’ll pursue some deals outside the US if we feel they’re exceptionally attractive."
Kaushik Sen, chief executive and co-founder of Wellspring, said in an interview with news provider Economic Times it had adopted the model of US-based medical centres, such as the Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic, which employ their own physicians, creating teams of specialists that collaborate in treating each patient.
Harshal Shah, chief executive of Reliance Venture, said to Economic Times: "We found this model extremely effective in offering excellent medical care, customer service as well as ethical practices and transparency under a very able team."