Toronto-based Wittington Ventures has hired former MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund (IAF) leader Zeeshan Ali as partner as it gears up to invest in more early-stage cleantech and healthtech startups.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Ali joined Wittington Ventures this month, after serving as interim managing director of fellow Toronto-based venture capital (VC) firm MaRS IAF. Zeeshan was previously a senior investment director at IAF. He spent his three years with the firm investing in early-stage Canadian tech startups. Before that, Ali worked for three years as head of business development at MaRS Discovery District.
“Our mission is to provide catalytic capital that bridges the critical gap between breakthrough science and technology with real-world commercialization.”
Zeeshan Ali, Wittington Ventures
In a LinkedIn post announcing his new Wittington Ventures role, Ali said he will “launch and lead” the firm’s $100-million CAD Canadian Innovation Fund, which has been established to back seed-stage deep tech startups in the healthcare and climate sectors.
“Our mission is to provide catalytic capital that bridges the critical gap between breakthrough science and technology with real-world commercialization,” Ali wrote. “I am excited to work alongside the Wittington Ventures team as we shape this new chapter and support entrepreneurs tackling some of the most urgent and meaningful challenges of our time.”
He will be working with former MaRS Discovery District colleague Leah Perry, who joined the Canadian Innovation Fund as a senior associate last month.
Perry came to Wittington Ventures after spending four years focusing on cleantech at MaRS. She most recently served as the Toronto non-profit innovation hub’s senior manager of cleantech. Prior to that, she spent six years working with Export Development Canada.
In an interview with BetaKit, Wittington Ventures managing partner Jim Orlando said that the firm was attracted to Ali and Perry’s experience investing in and supporting early-stage Canadian cleantech and healthtech startups at MaRS.
“We needed to beef up our expertise in the areas I just mentioned, and they’re great fits for what we’re doing,” Orlando said, adding that he does not anticipate any more hires directly related to the firm’s Canadian Innovation Fund at this point.
While Wittington Ventures will continue to operate as one investment team across its funds going forward, Ali and Perry have been tasked with focusing specifically on the Canadian Innovation Fund. With both of them now on board, Orlando said Wittington Ventures is refining its strategy for the fund, which has made one investment to date, and noted it could back as many as 10 to 15 companies in total.
Wittington Ventures is the tech-focused VC investment arm of the billionaire Canadian Weston family’s holding company, Wittington Investments, which controls Canadian grocery and pharmacy chains Loblaws and Shoppers Drug Mart.
The Westons have donated to health and environmental causes for years. Earlier this year, Wittington Investments revealed plans to back innovative startups in both areas through a new Canadian Innovation Fund alongside its first investment in Toronto’s Grey Matter Neurosciences, which develops medical devices that facilitate therapeutic brain stimulation for treatment of Alzheimer’s and other diseases.
Grey Matter Neurosciences is licensing ultrasound tech developed at the Sunnybrook Research Institute, thanks in part to funding from the charitable Weston Family Foundation.
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