Microsoft’s Venture Fund Makes First India Investment In Innovaccer

San Francisco-based Microsoft’s corporate venture fund M12 has marked its India entry with its first investment in healthcare data analytics startup Innovaccer. The company has invested an additional $10 Mn in Innovaccer’s ongoing Series B round, leading the total investment to $35 Mn.

In May 2018, WestBridge Capital and Lightspeed Ventures invested $25 Mn in Innovaccer.  So far, Innovaccer has raised $51 Mn since its inception in 2014.

Founded by Abhinav Shashank, Kanav Hasija and Sandeep Gupta, the Silicon Valley and Noida-based startup Innovaccer, is focussed on helping healthcare organisations accelerate innovation by making powerful decisions based on key insights and data-driven predictions.

Innovaccer plans to use the funds to continue building on its platform and an ecosystem of clinical innovators and leaders. Innovaccer recently added globally renowned innovators to its strategic advisory council. With additional funds, the company will also be doubling down on its AI assisted decision support capabilities and adding to its already 200+ connectors to healthcare data systems such as EHRs, HIEs, claims, and lab systems.

In a statement, M12 said, “Leveraging machine learning and healthcare-related contextual expertise, Innovaccer enables its users to consolidate financials, claims, patient, and operational data together to provide a comprehensive patient 360-view for better decision-making, care coordination, and reporting.”

With this first investment, M12 announced that it will be extending its investing coverage to India to help entrepreneurs innovate and grow with Microsoft’s reach, expertise, and technologies. Rashmi Gopinath, partner at M12, will be leading M12’s investments in India.

What Is M12’s Game Plan In India?

Microsoft’s M12 boasts of experienced VCs and Microsoft veterans, with team members on the ground in North America, Europe and Israel. Globally, M12 has invested in over 70 startups in areas ranging from cybersecurity and artificial intelligence to business SaaS and industrial drones.

The venture firm is also accessing Microsoft’s strategic assets, which enables it to value add in excess of the contributed capital. It usually invests in enterprise software companies in the Series A through C funding stage with a focus on big data and analytics, business SaaS, cloud infrastructure, machine learning and artificial intelligence, productivity and security.

As part of its value-add to portfolio companies, M12 offers access to strategic go-to-market resources and relationships globally.

For India, M12 has said that startups cater to a global customer base, most notably in artificial intelligence and machine learning, robotics, software as a service (SaaS), data analytics and Internet of Things (IoT). These sectors continue to be top strategic priority focus areas for Microsoft and M12 as well.

At the same time, the company believes that India offers unique competitive advantages by being home to top technical talent in the world including deep tech areas such as computer vision, robotics, blockchain and autonomous driving.

They believed these factors position India favourably to support highly innovative startups that can effectively compete on a global scale.

Nagraj Kashyap, Global head of M12 and Corporate Vice President, Microsoft, said “India is a market rich with entrepreneurs creating world-class startups that are poised for success on a global scale. In working with these innovative startups, we believe together we will help disrupt enterprises and industries ripe for digital transformation.”

Innovaccer: What Is It That Attracted M12?

Innovaccer flagship product, Healthcare Data Platform, has been used by more than 10,000 healthcare providers, affecting the lives of over 10 Mn patients in the US, as of February 2018. The 500 Startups-incubated company has already clocked 400% YoY revenue growth within four years of its launch.

Prior to this investment, the company has raised $41 Mn from venture capital funds including Lightspeed Ventures, Westbridge Capital and angel investors like Rajan Anandan, Beenos Group CEO Teru Sato among others.

The big data SaaS startup aims to transfigure into a $100 Mn organisation by 2020 and also looking forward to breaking even by 2019-end.

Abhinav Shashank, CEO Innovaccer, said, “Our unique value proposition is a holistic healthcare data platform that offers data aggregation and key analytics to help healthcare systems and insurance providers to align with value-based care models and realise significant cost savings and operational efficiency.”

Inc42 in its Annual Tech Indian Startup Funding Report 2018 highlighted that Indian healthtech startups raised $504 Mn in 69 funding deals, which was a 45.06% increase in the total investment for the year.

According to an IBEF report, the overall Indian healthcare market is estimated at $100 Bn. It is expected to touch $280 Bn by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 22.9%.

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