1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Darshana Zaveri of Catalyst Health Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Given that you are in a sector that is very relevant to what we are going through right now, what do you see is going to happen? There is a furious effort to come up with all kinds of testing devices with coronavirus and testing for antibodies of who has already gotten it. All these are medical device problems.

There is, of course, the vaccine side, but there is a big medical device issue that is developing. How do you process what’s happening?

Darshana Zaveri: We have certainly been thinking a lot internally about does this or does this not change the way we do things and the things that we focus on. Clearly, we are not going to completely change our investment thesis because of this particular event. We won’t start investing in vaccines or drugs.

However, there are a lot of elements to this pandemic that are relevant to us in any case given our investment thesis. As an example, we will certainly be paying a lot more attention to healthcare services including telemedicine which I think will become more and more rampant and more used as time goes by.

I think we will certainly be paying more attention to that space and the digital health space in general. We’ve always been focused on diagnostic devices. In particular, this pandemic has proven that the American healthcare system is not set up for early detection and prevention. It is highly geared towards treatment.

That is a structural problem that needs to be fixed. We certainly hope that as a result of this pandemic and the associated economic cost that all constituents will start paying more attention to diagnostic devices and prevention. That has always been part of our thesis.

Sramana Mitra: To your point about go-to-market strategy, I don’t know how this is all going to come together. I expect that after we have dealt with this, we are going to look at the Federal government and the State government putting in a lot more infrastructure to deal with similar issues that come up and put an early diagnostic infrastructure in place that is more home-based and not so much overwhelming the healthcare system.

Early diagnostics needs to be part of the planning for epidemics and pandemics going forward. I hope the Federal and State government, as well as the international bodies are going to put that infrastructure together. That is going to create a lot of opportunities operating in that part of the ecosystem to have successful companies. 

Darshana Zaveri: When you think about early detection and prevention, you’re not just talking about the specific tests that are relevant to that particular virus or bacteria. It’s also the instrumentation and tools that go with it. 

Sramana Mitra: Not just instrumentation and tools, but also the distribution infrastructure. You need to have these to people in the last mile so these things can happen far away from the hospitals.

Darshana Zaveri: You’re exactly right. We’ll be keeping an eye out on those technologies that facilitate that infrastructure. The last thing I wanted to mention is, if you think about COVID and its impact, we’re still waiting for all of the data on this to fall out eventually, but it’s clear that people with co-morbidities are impacted much more.

This is part of the overall health management of the population. Our focus on the technologies that address those underlying conditions is just as important.

Sramana Mitra: The regular management of all those diseases is going to remain as investment opportunities. I think biotech is one of the most exciting fields. Your core investment thesis remains, but there is something new that needs to be dealt with.

Darshana Zaveri: Right. A lot of investments need to occur in the infrastructure space to deal with this.

Sramana Mitra: Wonderful conversation. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 4 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Darshana Zaveri of Catalyst Health Ventures
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