Dubai-based VC firm backs healthcare’s digital growth

In the age of COVID-19, the last thing anyone wants is to schedule a doctor’s visit. Thanks to Noor Sweid’s Global Ventures, managing our health remotely is likely to get easier due to emerging market regional companies. Global Ventures is now exploring opportunities in healthcare technology, with an eye on founders whose technologies are meeting increased demand for telemedicine and diagnostics in emerging markets in the wake of COVID-19. Global Ventures most recent venture capital fund closed in December 2019 with $50 million. As of March, the fund’s capital was fully allocated with 17 investments including: Mumzworld (a mother and child focused website in the Middle East), food ordering platform LUNCH:ON and fintech company tribal. The Dubai-based firm invests in emerging market businesses where founders traditionally lack access to capital, but where the potential positive impact of technology is at its greatest. As a 'founder led' impact investor, the firm supports founders with international expansion, revenue growth, partnerships and strategy, governance, capital raising and exit pathing, in addition to talent and recruitment. This strategy will likely mean possibly leapfrogging legacy systems in that can in turn aid in providing healthcare access in emerging markets and globally during the pandemic. Sweid seeks to invest in healthcare technology companies that are looking to scale up quickly to meet the need as the world finds new ways to do telemedicine and other new remote approaches to medicine during the global pandemic. As the focus remains on mobile-first options due to the virus, the trend will likely allow for more dependence on telemedicine and telemonitoring, electronic hospital records and a telehealth infrastructure that provides hospitals with a novel way to meet the increased demand. The urgent need for healthcare as more hospitals deal with COVID-19 cases is not one that can simply be met by building more hospitals but through new diagnostics and telemedicine, she said. “Digital health will enable hospitals to serve people who may have to travel for days to go to the hospital,” said Sweid of her firm’s work in the space. She added, “COVID has made this an urgent priority.” One of the firm’s most recent investments is a $7 million investment in Helium Health, West Africa's largest electronic medical records provider, which is making healthcare more efficient and affordable in Africa. Another company is doing augmented reality that connects specialist surgeons that can then walk a generalist surgeon through any particular surgery. That technology was first used in Lebanon. For Sweid, the opportunity is similar to venture capital investing in San Francisco in the 1980s. “The power lies in the capital,” she said. To date roughly 60% of her LPs are outside of the Middle East. That said, she has attracted regional sovereign wealth funds in her first fund, including ADIO (Abu Dhabi Investment Office) and Mubadala Investment Company, also based in Abu Dhabi. While she lives in Dubai, her career in fact began in the U.S. working as a strategy consultant at Accenture in the early 2000s. Some of her work at Accenture included advising a major pharmaceuticals company on its acquisition of an oncology product and guiding a biotechnology company specializing in the discovery, development and delivery of therapies for the treatment of neurological diseases on its strategic organization and growth strategy. Currently, she is the only Arab woman in the Middle East running a venture capital fund and the first woman to lead an IPO in the region when Depa listed on the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ Dubai. Her team is made up of 14 members operation across Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the U.S. Beginning in late 2019, Global Ventures began investing in regional companies that were looking to scale up globally and within one year 70% of the companies in which the firm invests are expected to gain a global footprint. Right now, Sweid has roughly 320 healthtech companies in the pipeline that were sourced prior to the COVID crisis. Previous Global Venture investments have been made in areas such as e-commerce, software, online food delivery, FinTech, insurance, travel and transportation. Sweid and her team is also opportunistically exploring investments into EdTech and AgriTech going forward.

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