Vickers Venture focuses on finding ‘home runs’ in its investments

Finian Tan, chairman of Vickers Venture Partners and an early backer of internet giant Baidu, likes big ideas. Sitting in his Sentosa Cove penthouse, he rattles off a list of start-ups he and his partners have screened recently, though they have yet to make a commitment to invest in any of them. The ones that stand out are an ambitious company that is developing a cure for Hepatitis B, another that is experimenting with cold fusion technology and a drug delivery company that uses nanotechnology.

Not long after speaking to Enterprise, Vickers announced that it was leading a Series A round of funding for $4.8 million in a company called SiSaf. The biotech firm claims that its silicon- based nanoparticle platform can package and deliver medicine that was previously highly challenging to formulate.

To Tan, big ideas alone are not enough. He looks at their potential to become high-growth companies. SiSaf, for instance, is trying to solve a multibillion-dollar problem within the drug industry, and the market for nanotechnology in medical application is expected to grow to US$528 billion ($723.6 billion) by 2019, says BCC Research.

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