Rho Capital Partners is a

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

firm that actively invests in companies related to technology,

new media New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...

, cleaning technology and

healthcare Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...

. Rho Fund Investors, a division of Rho Capital Partners, is a

fund of funds A "fund of funds" (FOF) is an investment strategy of holding a portfolio of other investment funds rather than investing directly in stocks, bonds or other securities. This type of investing is often referred to as multi-manager investment. A f ...

(FoF), or fund that invests in other venture capital or private equity funds. Other divisions include Rho Canada.

History

Founding (1981-2003)

The firm, which is based in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...

and

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

, was founded in 1981. The group raised its "first multi-LP vehicle" in September 1999.

New investments (2004-2012)

Rho Ventures in 2005, based in New York, closed its fifth fund at $425 million, and said it would invest in communications, healthcare, and IT. Rho had invested in approximately 200 venture stage companies in 2009. Among Rho's portfolio companies around then were Bluefly,

Capstone Turbine Capstone Green Energy, formerly Capstone Turbine Corporation, was incorporated in 1988 as a California based gas turbine manufacturer that specializes in microturbine power along with heating and cooling cogeneration systems. Key to the Capstone de ...

, Celunol,

Coulomb Technologies ChargePoint (formerly Coulomb Technologies) is an American electric vehicle infrastructure company based in Campbell, California. ChargePoint operates the largest online network of independently owned EV charging stations operating in 14 countr ...

Commerce One Commerce One, Inc. was a B2B e-commerce company that used online auctions to connect business to their suppliers. At the peak of the dot-com bubble, the company had a market capitalization of $21.5 billion. The company's technologies included ...

Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...

Dashlane Dashlane is a subscription-based password manager and digital wallet application available on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android. Dashlane uses a freemium pricing model with subscription plan option. Overview Dashlane was founded on July 6, ...

,Dashlane Passes 2M Users, Collects $22M For Its Client-Based Password Manager
TechCrunch, May 19, 2014

Enerkem Enerkem is a clean technology company based in Montreal. Founded in 2000, Enerkem uses its patented technology to convert residual biomass and non-recyclable municipal solid waste (MSW) into biofuels and renewable chemicals. In Quebec, Canada, E ...

Human Genome Sciences Human Genome Sciences (HGS) was a biopharmaceutical corporation founded in 1992 by Craig Venter, Alan Walton and Wally Steinberg. It uses the human DNA sequence to develop protein and antibody drugs. It had drugs under development to treat suc ...

, Innova Dynamics,

IntraLinks Intralinks Holdings, Inc., founded in 1996, is a global technology provider of inter-enterprise content management and collaboration solutions. Its products serve the enterprise collaboration and strategic transaction markets, enabling the excha ...

iVillage iVillage, Inc. was a mass media company that operated the ”most popular female-oriented sites” on the internet in the 1990s. In addition to ivillage.com, the company operated iVillage UK, Astrology.com, GardenWeb, and the NBC Digital Health N ...

JustFab TechStyle Fashion Group, formerly JustFab Inc., is an online, membership fashion retailer that has a portfolio of five direct-to-consumer brands including JustFab, FabKids, ShoeDazzle, Savage X Fenty, and Fabletics. Its brands carries select ...

MedImmune MedImmune, LLC was a wholly owned subsidiary of AstraZeneca before February 14, 2019, when it was announced that the MedImmune name and branding would be discontinued in favor of AstraZeneca. MedImmune was founded in 1988 as Molecular Vaccines, ...

ReachLocal ReachLocal, Inc. (ReachLocal) is an online marketing and advertising provider for advertising to consumers in local markets. It provides Internet and mobile Internet marketing to business clients in the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. ...

, SolarBridge Technologies,SolarBridge Technologies Secures $15 Million in Series B Funding
Business Wire, April 26, 2010

Tacoda AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

Tercica Tercica, Inc., was a biopharmaceutical company based in Brisbane, California, United States. It developed Increlex (mecasermin DNA origininjection), also known as recombinant human Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 ( rhIGF-1). Tercica applied to the ...

, Tripod.com,

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Verenium Verenium Corporation was a San Diego, California-based industrial biotechnology company founded in 2007 as the result of a merger between Diversa (San Diego) and Celunol (Cambridge, MA). The company specialized in research and development for the ...

, Vertrue,

Vidyo Vidyo, Inc., founded as Layered Media, now part of Enghouse systems provides software-based collaboration technology and product-based visual communication products. The company's VidyoConferencing products are the first in the videoconferencing i ...

, and

Yantra Yantra () (literally "machine, contraption") is a geometrical diagram, mainly from the Tantric traditions of the Indian religions. Yantras are used for the worship of deities in temples or at home; as an aid in meditation; used for the benefits ...

. The firm had raised over $2 billion since inception across 6 funds by 2010. The firm then was investing their sixth fund, Rho Ventures VI, a $510 million fund launched in 2008.Rho Ventures Overview

Recent history (2013-2021)

Rho Canada, a Canadian venture capital firm and division of Rho Capital Partners, announced in 2013 that it had closed a $100 million fund to make "early-stage" investments in various types of media and technology companies. By then, Rho Capital Partners had invested in companies like Accedian Networks and

Beyond the Rack Beyond the Rack is a Montreal-based online shopping company that operates a website that offers clothing, accessories, fragrances, electronics, home goods, beauty and home decor products. The company was founded in 2009. In 2014 it had ten million ...

. Rho Fund Investors in 2013 had $2 billion under management, and was described as a "Fund of Funds (FoF)," or fund that invests in other venture capital or private equity funds. Rho Fund Investors remained US based and a division of Rho Capital Partners. Rho Fund Investors committed a $600 million fund investment program to India. In 2013 Rho Ventures was being managed by Habib Kairouz, also a managing partner at Rho Capital Partners. By 2017, Rho Capital Partners had also invested in

ChargePoint ChargePoint (formerly Coulomb Technologies) is an American electric vehicle infrastructure company based in Campbell, California. ChargePoint operates the largest online network of independently owned EV charging stations operating in 14 countr ...

. In October 2018, Rho Ventures' Martin Vogelbaum along with Syno Capital were reportedly aiming to raise $50 million for Inning One Ventures LP, a new fund.

References

External links