Venture Round: Venture Capital To Go

That's the thing about Asian venture capital news. A week later and you find yourself still hungry for more.

Well, last week we profiled MPM Capital's first foray into India, a $20 million investment in Sai Advantium Pharma, a contract research organization. At the time, we declared it the first investment that a U.S.-based VC made in an Indian life sciences company, a designation we later had to undeclare as we failed to identify TPG Biotech (previously known as TPG Ventures, also recognizable as the venture firm affiliated with Texas Pacific Group) had invested in its own CRO, Matrix Laboratories Inc., two or three years ago.

Well, you're better off just reading what colleague Ellen Licking wrote about TPG's investment here or about other opportunities here.

But if you'd enjoy another little nibble. Dow Jones VentureSource's yesterday issued its first quarter report on venture investments in India. The report says India $99 million in venture investment with 16 deals completed, "a 27% drop from the fourth quarter that saw a record $135 million put into 17 deals."

Life sciences deals didn't account for much. The report mentions only two biopharmaceutical deals were done, totaling $11 million. Last year, life sciences and health care companies brought in $99.5 million, so in the words of Peter's Evil Boss Bill Lumberg "we need to sorta play catch up."

William Greene, general partner at MPM, says he expects other life sciences deals to follow the investment in Sai. "Given the quality of the deal flow and the interest these entrepreneurial companies have in accessing international venture capital I do think this is an area that is really going to grow," Greene says. But he's not ready to predict when the next deal might be done. "I can't say whether it's one month, two months or two years."

Well, after last week's experience, if he's not going out on a limb on this one, neither will we.

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Meanwhile, a few remote areas within the US are getting a little more attention, according to assorted reports.

Utah
VentureWire Lifescience reported that vSpring Capital well on its way to raising $200 million for its third venture fund. The firm is based in Salt Lake City, Utah and has offices in Albuquerque, New Mexico. vSpring invests in "Intermountain West region" companies operating in life sciences and other industries, according to the firm's web site.

Canopy Ventures secured $100 million for its second fund. The fund previously invested only in information technology companies, but General Partners Ron Heinz and Brandon Tidwell will target life sciences companies as well. Obviously, there's no shortage of opportunities there as we've written about opportunities and investments in medical device and personalized medicine.

San Diego
San Diego--which as we noted back in November suffers from an disproportionately low number of local VCs for a region so rich in pharma and research--has a new seed fund, again according to VentureWire. Mesa Verde Venture Partners, a successor firm to IngleWood Ventures, wrapped up $15 million for a seed fund in March, with some of the capital coming from two venture firms, vSpring and Sanderling Ventures. General Partner Daniel Wood--the Wood of IngleWood--and a team of venture partners scattered across the SouthWest will invest the capital in new health care start-ups in their respective regions. The strategy is an interesting one for Sanderling, which also has offices in San Diego. General Partner Fred Middleton told VentureWire the relationship provides Sanderling access to early-stage deals without committing too much partner time. It's made similar investments in the past in seed-stage firms in Pittsburgh and Silicon Valley.

Midwest

Finally, we leave you hopes and dreams from the Mid-West that coastal VCs will invest more capital in flyover states.

As evidence, the article--actually a report from a local venture conference--points to the recent $22.75 million spin off of Esperion Therapeutics from Pfizer Inc. as perhaps the beginning of a trend.

But clearly Esperion is too unusual a deal to build a thesis around. VCs will travel far and wide to invest in a ready made biopharmaceutical company led by its original CEO Dr. Roger Newton. You'll find an interview with Newton in our upcoming IN VIVO the Magazine. We'll link to it here when it's available.

But states like Minnesota and Michigan are drawing more attention from VC, particularly device VCs who see an fresh resource of talent coming from the recent spate of layoffs the spate of recent layoffs from Medtronic and Boston Scientific.

This rush of thousands of experienced medical device workers who don't have the require the same compensation as their Silicon Valley counterparts already is interest from coastal venture capitalists. New incubator--or accelerator--ConceptTx Medical Inc. is just one effort that will be able to tap this new pool of talent.

As always, if you have any private suggestions, tips, or if you really jonesing to talk venture this holiday weekend email me here. I'll get back to you Tuesday.

(Image courtesy of Flickr user Hfabulous through a Creative Commons license.)