This Growth Equity Firm Thinks We’re Entering The ‘Golden Age’ Of Life Sciences Investing

Funding challenges persist for biotech and pharma, but that hasn’t kept one growth equity investor from being excited about the space.

The Global Fund Women Conference is set for December 11, and one of the speakers is Daniella Kranjac of Avant Bio LLC, a growth equity firm focused on the life sciences industry, including biotech. Hosted by 100 Women in Finance, the conference features top female fund managers and allocators, including Michelle Morris of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, Divya Nettimi of Avala Global, Libby Cantrill of PIMCO, Alena Kuprevich of Disciplina Capital Management and others.

In an interview with Hedge Fund Alpha, Kranjac shared details on Avant Bio’s strategy, how it adds value to its portfolio companies, and the next “golden age” of life sciences.

Background on Daniella Kranjac

The youngest daughter of two Croatian immigrants, Kranjac believes the immigrant work ethic mentality was ingrained in her from an early age. She was always science and math oriented, which led her to study chemical engineering in university. Kranjac was also very interested in how biology was utilized for environmental purposes. While at university, Kranjac co-founded a life science equipment company in the late 1990s.

“We bootstrapped that business, commercialized it, scaled it to about $30 million in revenue and sold it to GE Healthcare,” Kranjac said. “… Subsequently, I did M&A and business development at GE, and that was specifically also within life sciences. So acquiring the sort of early stage and growth companies that were starting to scale.”

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Founding Avant Bio

Today, Kranjac is a founding general partner at Avant Bio, a growth equity firm embracing the emerging convergence of biology and technology.

“While at GE Healthcare, I kept finding companies that were unfunded or underfunded. And if they did have funding, they did not receive great advice because most of the funders were not particularly knowledgeable about the space.”

Because she saw this need to enable tomorrow’s therapeutics, Kranjac established Avant Bio, becoming an operator-turned-fund-manager. The firm partners with visionaries and revenue-generating companies at the intersection of advanced technologies and novel therapeutics.

Avant Bio provides growth equity, helping its portfolio companies accelerate growth while it holds for a number of years and then exits its position, usually to a strategic acquirer.