Roel Bulthuis (pictured), managing director of Merck Ventures, spoke to Kaloyan Andonov about the evolution of the venturing fund, which has increased its capital commitment and its investment scope beyond healthcare and pharmaceuticals
Your fund was doubled from €150m ($170m) to €300m recently. How has the strategic vision behind it evolved?
We started out as MS Ventures in 2009 as a healthcare-only fund at the time. In those days, Merck had the ability to access external innovation through licensing and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) but the rationale was we also needed to have more active participation in the startup environment. We wanted to have a better ability to support companies early on with…
