Peregrine Ventures, an Israeli med-tech venture capital fund, just closed its fourth fund, Peregrine 4, raising USD115 million. Their partners include some of the leading institutional and private equity investors from Israel, the United States, Europe and Australia.
Peregrine 4 will continue to invest in early stage and late stage rounds of medical technology startups. Peregrine now has over USD200 million under management, and an equal amount available for co-investment, follow-on, and late stage investments in its portfolio companies from Peregrine 1, 2, and 3.
Since 2001, Peregrine Ventures has been at the forefront of medical, biotech, and life science investments in Israel. The VC firm has completed 10 exits totaling more than USD2 billion in cumulative value. Prominent exits include Valtech, Neovasc, B-Balloon, Eximo and Rocketick. The team, which includes Eyal Lifschitz, Boaz Lifschitz (founding partners), Lior Shahory, Tamir Tal, David Eldar and Tal Carasso, concentrates on all stages and sectors of the med-tech industry, with a special focus and unique expertise in early seed investments. The team’s experience and knowledge of the industry’s real needs has yielded numerous successful companies in the fields of therapeutic single product use devices, digital health, pharma, esthetics, food-tech and diagnostics. Valtech Cardio, Memic, CartiHeal, Cordio, Neovasc, Eximo, and Magneto are all companies that Peregrine has invested in and helped develop and succeed.
Peregrine prefers to take a lead investor role in most of its investments in order to have a real impact on building and commercializing the portfolio from the early seed stage on to the later stages of development. The management team employs a unique model and establishes startup companies based on actual needs of the industry that emerge from meetings held with the leading global medical equipment companies. Among the examples of startups established in this fashion: Valtech Cardio, Memic, Cordio, Endomatic, Magneto and ArtFix.
Peregrine Ventures also owns and operates the Incentive Incubator, which is considered the most successful in Israel based on standards such as follow on investments and exits. It is one of the longest incubators in existence which is a partnership with the Israeli Innovation Authority and was established to incubate the most promising Israeli med-tech start-ups. The role of Peregrine there is more than just financial. They are involved in finding and selecting the start-ups with the greatest chance of success, mentoring them, developing marketing and sales strategies, and leveraging their relationships in order to bring the products to market in the quickest and most efficient way.
Eyal Lifschitz, managing partner at Peregrine, says: “The strong demand for investment in Peregrine 3, a USD75 million fund closed two years ago, and Peregrine 4 is due to the trust and confidence of investors in both our team and investment model. There is a huge demand, and opportunity, in medical technologies in Israel and foreign investors recognise this. We chose to limit the Peregrine 4 fund to USD115 million since we believe this is the size that best suits our management team and abilities to find the best opportunities and take an active role in helping them achieve their goals.”