Two new healthcare/life-sci funds were announced over the last 24 hours. The first is Index Ventures with a fresh $438.8M bank account to finance biotech and cleantech companies. This is the sixth fund for Israeli-based Index, and while they intend to use it to fund growing biotech companies, you might wanna do a double-check.

Index’s last fund financed mainly technology and web companies like Skype, Joost, MySQL, Playfish and Last.fm. This fund will surely see more cleantech given 1. the Obama administration’s budget for clean energy and 2. the relative lack of good growth-stage biotech companies out there right now. Index will also have to compete with big pharma buyouts who literally eat $400M for breakfast and put down $billions in one fell-swoop. Also, you should take a look at the Index portfolio and see how the life science investments stack up against the technology ones; it’s about a 3:7 ratio, respectively.

Index even said (per VentureBeat):

“Green technology is an increasingly hot ticket, proving to be fairly recession-proof and heavily supported by the government. When it comes to life-science opportunities, Index is on the lookout for companies with robust product pipelines and more mature companies that have proven their marketability.”

All we’re saying is that if you want money from these guys, your company’s gotta be sexy – like Brad Pitt or Aneglina Jolie sexy (depending on which way you bat).

The second is a $194M fund by Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners, spun out of Rockefeller’s Venrock. The new tranche is designed again to invest in publicly-held and late-stage private healthcare companies.

There’s money out there guys – just gotta know where to look.

Image from sven-eppert

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