General
We are a newly organized blank check company incorporated in August 2020 as a Cayman Islands exempted company for the purpose of effecting a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses or entities, which we refer to throughout this prospectus as our initial business combination. To date, our efforts have been limited to organizational activities as well as activities related to this offering. We have not selected any specific business combination target and we have not, nor has anyone on our behalf, initiated any substantive discussions, directly or indirectly, with any business combination target.
MPM Capital (“MPM”) is a healthcare investment firm with over two decades of experience founding and investing in life science companies that seek to translate scientific innovations into cures for major diseases. With its experienced and dedicated team of investment professionals and Executive Partners, MPM strives to power novel medical breakthroughs that transform patients’ lives. MPM retains a primary focus on investing in companies with preclinical technologies and financing them through human clinical proof-of-concept (“POC”). In the biotech industry, and particularly in the fields of Oncology and Rare Disease, achieving clinical POC is a major value inflection point, at which point the value of the company (and its technology and therapies) dramatically increases, triggering exits such as M&A by larger pharmaceutical companies or sale of the holdings via the public markets. MPM currently invests across three vehicles: BioVentures 2018, a venture capital fund, Oncology Impact Fund 2, an oncology centric crossover fund (both private and public equities), and Oncology Innovations Fund, an early stage oncology investment initiative with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Our independent directors have extensive experience in clinical medicine, development and regulatory affairs, operations within academia as well as the healthcare and financial industry. All of our independent directors have led or been a part of leadership teams in biotechnology companies that have together generated billions in value for investors and helped develop numerous FDA approved drugs for patients. We believe that their breadth of experience will bolster our ability to thoroughly evaluate prospective candidates and successfully execute our initial business combination.
While we may pursue an initial business combination opportunity in any industry or geographical location, we intend to capitalize on the ability of our management team to identify promising opportunities in the biotechnology sector, with an emphasis on oncology and rare disease therapeutics where our management has extensive experience in investing, operating and drug development.
Our Sponsor and Competitive Advantages
Our sponsor is an affiliate of MPM, a life sciences investment firm with over $2.3 billion in assets under management as of June 30, 2020. MPM was co-founded by Luke Evnin, Ph.D. and Ansbert Gadicke, M.D., and launched its first venture capital fund in 1997. Since inception, MPM has focused its investment activity exclusively in the biotechnology industry with a strategy of funding and building private development stage companies developing new medicines addressing areas of significant unmet medical need. MPM’s strategy of identifying assets and utilizing its differentiated capabilities to efficiently drive drug development through in-human POC studies has fortified MPM’s track record of creating industry-leading companies that have yielded 52 commercial products approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”). To place this achievement into context, the entire combined efforts of the pharmaceutical industry has yielded an average of 38 new drug approvals per year in the U.S. for the past five years.
MPM has earned its reputation as a leading venture capital investor with industry entrepreneurs and academics due to its investment expertise, value-additive capabilities and the high level of engagement of the team. In particular, MPM has differentiated itself among other venture firms in the founding and building of innovative companies. Since 2010, MPM has created and launched 30 companies relying in significant measure on the active engagement of its deep bench of Executive Partners. The expertise of the MPM team of investment professional and Executive Partners spans all stages of the industry value chain, including research and development, clinical, regulatory, business development and operations, intellectual property, and commercialization.
Our management team is led by Luke Evnin (Ph.D.), Todd Foley (M.B.A), Ed Hurwitz (J.D., M.B.A), each Managing Directors at MPM, and Vin Bhaskar (Ph.D.), Partner at MPM. Together, the management team has more than half a century of investment insight across the biotech sector and possesses deep expertise and experience in structuring investment, building companies and developing technologies and products.
Turmeric Acquisition Corp. was formed to leverage the extensive experience and track record of the management team with the goal of financing a company that can both develop transformative therapies for patients in need and deliver significant returns to its investors.