FHE Ventures

FHE Ventures

FHE Ventures operates as the investment arm adjacent to Fundação Educacional Lucas Machado (FELUMA), the educational foundation that controls Faculdade Ciências Médicas de Minas Gerais (FCMMG). Rafael Kenji Hamada, co-founder of the HealthAngels venture builder and CEO of both FHE Ventures and FELUMA, established the firm in Belo Horizonte to deploy capital into early-stage technology companies, with a pronounced emphasis on healthcare innovation. The firm functions not as a standalone fund but as a corporate venture entity that draws deal flow directly from one of Brazil's largest private medical schools and its affiliated teaching hospital, Hospital Universitário Ciências Médicas (HUCM). FHE Ventures targets seed and early-stage startups across healthtech, enterprise software, fintech, agritech, and climate technology, deploying through direct equity investments and venture builder partnerships. The firm co-invests alongside Bossanova Investimentos, one of Brazil's most active early-stage VCs, and partners with the Healthcare Alliance network for cross-border startup sourcing. HealthAngels, the venture builder also led by Hamada, provides a pipeline of incubated companies that FHE Ventures can evaluate at formation. Stage coverage spans pre-seed through seed extensions, with a preference for startups that can pilot inside the FCMMG hospital ecosystem as a clinical testing environment. Geographic focus is Brazil with international co-investment capability through alliance partners. FHE Ventures anchors its activities inside Órbi Conecta, the Belo Horizonte innovation hub, where the firm participates in Investor Day events alongside Bossanova. Roger Dias serves as a director representing the firm internationally. The structure does not disclose a traditional fund size; instead, capital deployment flows from FELUMA's balance sheet and the operating revenues of FCMMG and HUCM, making AUM a less meaningful metric than bed count, student enrollment, and venture builder portfolio valuation. Philanthropic and commercial assets remain under common governance through the FELUMA foundation, with no separately walled-off endowment vehicle publicly identified. FHE Ventures' structural differentiator is its embedded access to Brazil's fourth-largest private hospital network as a procurement client, clinical validation site, and permanent capital anchor. This 'hospital-as-an-LP' model is rare in Brazilian venture, where most healthtech investors are financial VCs without clinical operating assets. The architecture creates a sourcing advantage: startups accepted into the hospital's pilot pipeline receive de-risked reference accounts before the firm commits additional capital.