Mandatum Life, the insurance subsidiary of financial services group Sampo, has contributed to the €30m ($32.6m) first close for an insurance technology-focused fund formed by Finland-based venture capital firm Innovestor.
B2B Industrial Technology Fund has an expected ceiling of €100m and its other limited partners include unnamed institutional investors, family offices and individual backers. It expects to begin investing as early as the second quarter of 2020.
Innovestor is a Nordics-focused firm that makes early-stage investments in addition to incubating startups. It has invested more than $167m and currently has more than 100 portfolio companies across sectors such as life sciences, cleantech and robotics.
The new fund will target business-to-business industry technology developers in the Nordic and Baltic regions, investing at pre-series A and series A stage, in areas like smart cities, security and energy technology.
Mandatum Life was among the LPs in Innovestor’s first fund, which closed at about $93m in 2016 with the purchase of a seed-stage portfolio owned by Finnish government export credit agency Finnvera. Fellow insurers Nordea Life and Illmarinen also contributed capital.
The corporate also backed Innovestor’s €10.3m second fund in 2018 together with life insurance and wealth management firm Lombard International Assurance and museum operator Serlachius Taidesäätiö.