Norwest Venture Partners joins venture peers in backing India-based Perfint Healthcare.

US-based venture capital firm Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) has made its first investment in India by joining a corporate venturing group backing Perfint Healthcare, a firm set up in 2005 making medical equipment to detect cancer.

NVP led the $7.2m series B round in Perfint, which included participation from previous investors, VC Accel Partners (India) and IDG Ventures India, a $150m country-focused corporate venturing fund of US-based technology publisher International Data Group. IDG Ventures in total manages $3.7bn in corporate venturing and has a joint venture with Accel in China.

The B round will complete development of Perfint’s new Interventional Oncology Assistance products and expand the company’s sales into southeast Asia, Europe, the Middle East and US.

Subburaman Nandakumar, co-founder and chief executive of Perfint, said: "We chose to partner with Norwest Venture Partners because of its expertise and know-how in bringing products to market globally."

IDG had previously invested $3m in a $3.5m series A round for Perfint, with the remainder coming from early stage India-based VC Erasmic Venture Fund, which merged with Accel in 2008 to establish the US firm’s presence in the country.

James Mawson

James Mawson is founder and chief executive of Global Venturing.