H1 2022 Ayuh Ventures Longevity Fund LP update
Our team has been working on solutions to solve the world’s greatest issues for a while now. We first started Prithvi Ventures in 2020 with the understanding that there can be no future without a healthy planet underpinning it. The last three years have demonstrated that without a content and healthy body and mind, the fruits of Prithvi cannot be enjoyed. There are a number of problems that humans continue to face that prevent them from living a joyful life — psychological, neurological, physical, sensory, and sexual & reproductive health issues for which there are few effective treatment options.
In recent decades, up to 50% of the global population was facing psychological distress of some kind, with an estimated 28% of the global population facing depression and similar global numbers for anxiety, PTSD, and sleep problems. Then, beginning in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, the global population of those with anxiety and depression surged by an additional 25%. Meanwhile, current treatments for a large segment of the population dealing with mental health disorders have shown to be ineffective and carry the risk of a number of side effects.
Similarly, physical, motor, or sensory dysfunction or impairment that can arise from disabilities at birth, traumatic injury, or illness can equally hinder one’s ability to live a full life. These include neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, MS, or cerebral palsy, autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel diseases and psoriasis, or other disabilities like deafness or hard of hearing, forms of paralysis, or communication problems. Despite nearly 15% of the global population living with some form of the aforementioned disabilities and 10% of the world suffering from chronic pain, there are shockingly few effective and scalable treatment options and few effective treatment or symptom management options for individuals in need. The same goes for sexual and reproductive health, including dysmenorrhea, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, hypoactive sexual desire disorder, dyspareunia, anorgasmia, premature ejaculation and delayed or inhibited ejaculation. More specifically, one area that is particularly overlooked is women’s sexual health despite women making up about half of the global population. Approximately 30% of men globally deal with premature ejaculation while up to 25% of women deal with menstrual irregularities and up to 30% of women deal with extremely severe symptoms of dysmenorrhea.
It would be hard to imagine that there is anyone who is untouched by any of these longevity-tarnishing disorders in some way or another. Whether personally or through watching family or friends suffer, all of us at Ayuh Ventures have witnessed the hardships and lack of treatment options available to ourselves or those we love. We refuse to accept the status quo treatment options as the best options. We are on a mission to support founders developing the most promising technologies that help us live more joyful lives.
In 2021, Ayuh Ventures co-invested with LPs via SPVs in Lief Therapeutics’s Series Seed, Beckley Psytech’s Series B, Reset Pharmaceuticals’s Series A, and Mindstate Design Labs’s Series Seed, to lay down the foundation for our Longevity Fund launch. Since its launch at the beginning of 2022, the Ayuh Ventures Fund has invested in seven longevity startups:
● Clerkenwell Health is building the commercial infrastructure to bring psychedelic-assisted therapeutic candidates and technologies to market. They are Europe’s first clinical research organization for psychedelic-assisted therapy trials. The company is driven by fixed-rate contracts with drug development companies that engage with Clerkenwell in a multi-phased project to design and advise on their clinical trial strategy, manage pre-clinical trials, and deliver Phase 1, 2, and 3 trials for their drugs. The Ayuh fund invested in their Pre-Seed+ round.
● Gilgamesh is a drug discovery and neurocircuitry-focused platform for novel psychedelic-based treatments that currently has eight NCEs in its development pipeline with target indications for psychiatric disorders. The Ayuh fund invested in their Series B.
● Kanna Health is a pre-clinical biopharmaceutical company focused on developing a portfolio of novel compounds derived from the kanna plant, Sceletium tortuosum, starting with an on-demand treatment for premature ejaculation (PE), which currently has no FDA approved treatments. The Ayuh fund invested in their Pre-Seed+ round.
● Lief Therapeutics is a remote monitoring startup that has developed and deployed an FDA approved, revenue generating, high accuracy wearable Heart Rate Variability (HRV) monitor and app for biofeedback training for mental health. Ayuh first invested in Lief via SPV in 2021 and followed on with a fund investment in their Seed+ round.
● Pepper Bio is a drug discovery and biology platform that uses transomics with phosphoproteomics to develop treatments based on the underlying biological drivers of diseases, starting with oncology, neurodegenerative, and inflammatory indications. This novel technology gives researchers a complete, real-time map of what happens in cells before and during disease. The Ayuh fund invested in their Seed round
● Psy Therapeutics is a pre-clinical biopharmaceutical company focused on developing a portfolio of novel small molecule therapeutics to treat generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, anxious depression, PTSD, post-operative pain, Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, and other tauopathies. The Ayuh fund invested in their Seed+ round.
Samphire Neuroscience is a neurotechnology company developing and commercializing a wearable medical device that uses transcranial direct current stimulation along with a companion app to treat symptoms of dysmenorrhea and PMDD. The Ayuh fund invested in their Seed round.
It’s been quite a summer for us with lots of learnings along the way so far:
We invested in 7 Longevity startups in 4 months, Pre seed to series A is definitely our sweet spot to help founders with launch capital, backing ourselves rather than who else is investing & where. Our biggest learning is the similarity between Longevity & Climate, the Longevity industry has less of the unknowns and more of a structure already in place which Climate is still figuring it out. However this community seems reluctant to tackle the real cost issues around mental health, fertility and neuro degeneration. Quite a few investors have fear of the unknown and invest accordingly, and refuse to create/ plan a price parity roadmap and we see that as a big risk, to achieve in the future: Annualized cost per patient, Annualized number of patients, A plan for the reimbursement model, insurance.
This team has never taken the easy way route to achieve max ROI to LPs and Founders, and will always do that by sticking to our core beliefs. The Longevity metrics of patients cost & number using a price parity roadmap is a core part of our thesis. Time will tell if this move will be a game changer or game breaker for us, looking the other way in denial isn’t this team. Making new mistakes to learn from is a sign of progress for us, not making old ones due to fears.
With all humility a big thank you :)
