The Cambridge, UK cluster isn’t short of opportunity: the university’s research and knowledge exchange activities alone contribute £23.1bn to the economy per year. Investment firm NetScientific, and its fund management subsidiary EMV Capital, are among the investors that have flocked to the city.

And NetScientific is now doubling down on the cluster, chief executive Ilian Iliev says, after having taken over its local peer Martlet Capital, a firm that had been the corporate venture arm of aerospace and defence company Marshall Group for nine years until 2021. The move was the natural conclusion to EMV Capital’s earlier decision to become an investor in Martlet.

EMV Capital is now exploring launching new funds under the Martlet Capital brand. Already, the acquisition has helped NetScientific nearly double its assets under management to more than £100m and more than doubling the portfolio to 70 companies.

Iliev, who first joined the podcast in March last year, returns also to discuss NetScientific’s decision to acquire a 30% stake in Wanda, a remote patient monitoring platform. It’s an unusual full-circle moment for the portfolio company and the investor: Wanda was majority-owned by EMV Capital until 2019 (this predated EMV Capital’s own merger with NetScientific). Noting that there can be “poetry in finance”, Iliev explains how the world’s shift to telemedicine accelerated by the pandemic has made Wanda a valuable proposition to an investor like NetScientific once again.

Ilian Iliev first joined Beyond the Breakthrough in March 2023. Listen to that episode now to learn more about NetScientific and EMV Capital’s history and why the firm is bullish on deeptech, healthcare and the Cambridge cluster.