Priya Oberoi set up Goddess Gaia Ventures (GGV), a women’s health tech investment fund, in 2020 after her own experiences of cancer and fertility treatments. They spurred her to invest her own money in companies developing technology to speed up diagnoses and automate routine processes.
GGV is on course to close its first £100 million fund by December and has invested in 11 companies to date, including the Singapore-based Biorithm, which finished its Series A funding round this month. The venture capital fund invests in female health tech companies founded by both men and women, with the aim of helping them gain a foothold in the United States, the world’s largest healthcare market.
A cancer diagnosis changed my life — and was my first experience of the problems with women’s healthcare
I found out I had cancer just as I was going up for partnership at a “magic circle” law firm. I was working 70 to 80 hours a week as a finance lawyer specialising in derivatives, and particularly Islamic finance. I took a step back and thought: “I don’t want to continue on this path.” I had built up a lot of professional connections in the Middle East and after my treatment in 2010 I decided to set up my own investment advisory company, connecting private individuals and institutions to businesses seeking investment.
Five years later I was having fertility treatment but it was complicated by the fact that taking hormones did not go well with the type of cancer I had had. I also developed an autoimmune disease.
Throughout these three life-changing situations, I was constantly thinking: “Why is it so difficult to find the right doctors, the right medication, the right prognosis? Why do I have to travel to other countries for treatment and why do I have to have all the same tests when I get there?”
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So I started investing in women’s health tech companies as an angel investor, and at first I was really on the look out for things that would have helped me. I set up Goddess Gaia Ventures in 2020 with my co-founders, when the pandemic put a stop to me travelling to the Middle East for work. We assessed whether it was possible to scale up the angel investing to the level of a fund based in the UK. After looking at all the proof points and data points out there, we decided there was a huge addressable market.
We will not improve women’s healthcare if we only back female founders and only talk to female investors
Especially when you’re going into a meeting to talk about a product addressing gynaecological problems, there can be a sense of ickiness. That doesn’t mean that if you’re talking to a woman investor they will naturally understand and if you’re talking to a man they won’t. In either case, you have to explain the problem in the right way: what the issue is, how many women are going to be affected by it, potential revenues and potential profits. In the current macro environment, the focus should be on returns and when are you going to get there. Profitability has taken over from growth metrics.
My personal belief is that good companies will always get funded, but women founders, like other under-represented groups, have always found it harder to raise money. Right now, that’s definitely become more visible.
The biggest issue for healthcare start-ups is time
Healthcare companies need a lot more runway between the time they raise seed capital and the time they get to their Series A fundraising — roughly three years — so we decided we would invest in that gap. It’s a long time for founders — you might have clinical trials, you’ve got to get yourself known to your future customers, but you’ve also got to live and survive.
I think femtech founders are ready for it, but you need to be someone who is able to take a risk and be willing to make some lifestyle choices and changes. Putting your own money in first shows other investors that you really have conviction and you’re ready to do this.
Investing in people who can make money is the key to creating better outcomes in women’s health
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When we were building this fund, it was very important that it was commercial, and creating returns. To improve the outcomes in women’s health, we need circularity. We need amazing founders to become very successful and then build another set of companies and invest in the next generation of founders.
That’s also why we focus on helping start-ups based outside the US — mainly UK, European and Israeli companies — to access that market. If you want to make money, you have to be in the US. The hard part is how, so we have on our board US healthcare insurance specialists who know how to help young companies get those reimbursement codes from insurers, and former founders who know how to scale across the US.
Our intention is that our founders’ success will create interest from investors who maybe are not traditionally interested in women’s health, but who will prick up their ears and get involved. That’s what we want to do — engage the majority of investors in women’s healthcare.
Priya Oberoi was talking to Amy Wilson, a regular freelance writer for Times Enterprise Network
