Intel Capital and Endeavor‘s new vehicle Catalyst have joined forces to invest in the Brazilian health and wellness portal Minha Vida, the two funds announced today without revealing the deal amount.
Currently celebrating its eighth birthday, Minha Vida (“My Life”) provides Brazilians with online information on fitness, beauty, health and wellness, as well as dedicated programs. It is also the health channel for the Brazil’s top Internet portals such as MSN, Yahoo, Terra, UOL and R7, which help it boast over 8 million unique visitors per month.
Following this announcement, Minha Vida will also launch additional content and features, such as an upcoming product aimed at “improving relationships between doctors and patients.”
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While this marks Intel Capital’s first Brazilian bet for 2012, the fund has already backed 40 Latin American companies since 1999, with over half of its $140m investment going to Brazilian ventures. Last February, we reported that Intel Capital invested in fashion startups Coquelux and Fashion.me, though today’s announcement implies that these two deals were actually closed in 2011.
Added to Intel Capital’s recent investment in the Brazilian medical imagery software company Pixeon, this move also confirms the fund’s interest for Latin American health-related companies. According to David Thomas, managing director for Intel Capital in Latin America, “the significant inflow of new Internet users in Brazil [means that] the online health and wellness sector is a promising market for entrepreneurs in this region.”
As for Catalyst, this is the fund’s second investment since its launch in February this year. At the time, the non-profit organization Endeavor had announced that it would start making philanthropic venture-style investments in emerging countries, starting with $2m in funding for the Argentine software company Globant.
Like Globant, Minha Vida’s founders were already part of Endeavor’s high-impact entrepreneurship network before this investment, as Catalyst focuses on giving additional financial support to Endeavor portfolio’s companies.
Other investments are already in the works at Catalyst; last February, Endeavor Chief Executive Linda Rottenberg said that “five more investments –two in Brazil, two in Mexico and one in Turkey – [were] likely to happen in the next three to four months,” which means that four deals are yet to be announced.
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