Novalis Biotech aims for January second close for new €25m fund

Novalis Biotech held a first close on €8m for its second fund on 8 November. The fund's second closing, estimated to be larger than the first, is targeted for January, Van den Berghe said.

The new fund will allow the firm to invest €1m or more per deal, up from the €250,000-1m seed and pre-seed deployments it has made thus far, Van den Berghe said.

Investors in the second fund are mainly high-net-worth individuals and family offices, Van den Berghe said, adding that the firm is expecting maximum commitments of €5m per investor. The investor base is more skewed towards Belgium, with the legal structure of the vehicle also being Belgian. With a potential third fund, Novalis is likely to set up a Luxembourg structure and have a managing partner in London to tap more international investors, Van den Berghe added.

The fund aims to provide a return of at least 3x to investors over six years, he said. The lifespan of the fund is 7-10 years.

Van den Berghe told Unquote he is seeing conflicting trends in fundraising. Some LPs are opportunistically holding their powder dry due to the Covid-19 crisis, while others think that the way out of the pandemic is through greater investments in technology and healthcare, because those are the sectors that have better weathered the crisis.

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