Brandon Capital has closed Australia’s largest ever life sciences fund in a deal which will capitalise on Australia’s burgeoning life sciences scene.
The A$200m ($158m) Medical Research Commercialisation Fund is the venture capitalist’s third such fund, and was raised from superannuation funds AustralianSuper, HESTA, StatewideSuper, and Hostplus.
Brandon Capital has partnered 50 of Australia’s universities, research institutes, and research hospitals, and has previously backed numerous innovations stemming from universities such as Queensland’s Vaxxas, which is developing needleless injections. Around a quarter of the fund will be used to pursue very-early seed stage investments in biotech or medtech technologies, with the remainder being used to provide follow-on funding to these opportunities and those already in Brandon’s portfolio.
In addition, each of the investors in the fund will have the opportunity to co-invest large sums into Brandon’s most promising companies as they develop.
Chris Nave, Principal Executive of the MRCF and Managing Director of Brandon Capital said: “We believe that there is significant potential in Australian life sciences, which has always outperformed in terms of research innovation, but has fallen short when it comes to commercialising those discoveries. This failing has been largely attributed to the lack of sufficient early stage investment capital and access to hands-on investment expertise to guide the development and commercialisation of these medical technologies. The performance of the MRCF funds over the past 7 years demonstrates that its unique investment model has overcome these deficiencies.”
