Patria buys Igah and doubles the worth of the brand new fund

With a new partner, Pedro Melzer’s venture capital manager will seek US$ 300 million in the fourth fund

Pátria has just announced the purchase of Igah Ventures, expanding the range of companies in which it can invest and showing that the bet of the venture capital firm is here to stay. The incursion of the traditional venture capital manager by less mature companies had already started last year, with the purchase of StartSe and the association with Kamaroopin, of former Tarpon Pedro Faria.

In an agreement sewn in recent months with Igah, Pátria acquired 100% of the management company founded by Pedro Sirotsky Melzer. The transaction will be fully paid in shares, which will make Melzer and the other partners of the venture capital manager Pátria’s partners. The M&A amounts were not disclosed.

“It is a very important space, but we still did not act. Investment in business creation has flourished in recent years, which is very important for the economy and entrepreneurial environment. We think that Igah is the ideal partner”, said Ricardo Scavazza, one of Patria’s main partners and CIO, to Pipeline.

A recent change in Igah’s shareholding structure opened the door to seeking new controllers and new formats. In August, Luciano Huck, Gilberto Sayão, Rodrigo Xavier and Eduardo Melzer, who were investment partners, left the business.

By moving to the umbrella of Pátria, a manager with more than US$ 26.5 billion under management, Igah now has access to a broader investor base, which will give it more firepower, with fatter funds without losing the strategy that marked the manager’s history, said Melzer.

Igah was working on raising its fourth fund, a $150 million vehicle, when talks around the M&A heated up. The funding process on stand-by and will now be resumed for a larger amount.

“We should reach around US$ 300 million, maybe a little more”, said Melzer. The details of Igah’s fourth fund still need to be defined, but the expectation is that the manager will make the first closing of this vehicle by the middle of next year.

According to Melzer, the new fund is a demonstration of confidence in the innovation ecosystem, which became more selective after the monetary tightening and dried up the liquidity that irrigated businesses that were not always founded.

“To be quite emphatic, we are very excited about the moment. Today, there is a big filter. Those in the market have a lot of conviction and entrepreneurs are looking more seriously at developing their projects, which makes the asset class healthier,” said Melzer.

For Pátria, the arrival of Igah is also a way of expanding knowledge of some industries in their various stages. In the health area, for example, the private equity area has already invested in companies such as Drogasil, Dasa and Alliar, while Kamaroopin (which looks at investments in what Scavazza calls growth equity) is an investor in Dr. query and Zenklub. Igah, in turn, invested in healthtechs such as Conexa Saúde and Labi Exames.

In addition to Melzer, Pátria now has three other partners from Igah: Thiago Maluf, Márcio Trigueiro and Camila Sangali — the operational quartet of the business.

Source: Pipeline Valor