Toronto-based Wittington Ventures has hired former MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund (IAF) leader Zeeshan Ali as partner as it gears up to invest in more early-stage cleantech and healthtech startups.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Ali joined Wittington Ventures this month, after serving as interim managing director of fellow Toronto-based venture capital (VC) firm MaRS IAF. Zeeshan was previously a senior investment director at IAF. He spent his three years with the firm investing in early-stage Canadian tech startups. Before that, Ali worked for three years as head of business development at MaRS Discovery District.
“Our mission is to provide catalytic capital that bridges the critical gap between breakthrough science and technology with real-world commercialization.”
Zeeshan Ali, Wittington Ventures
In a LinkedIn post announcing his new Wittington Ventures role, Ali said he will “launch and lead” the firm’s $100-million CAD Canadian Innovation Fund, which has been established to back seed-stage deep tech startups in the healthcare and climate sectors.
“Our mission is to provide catalytic capital that bridges the critical gap between breakthrough science and technology with real-world commercialization,” Ali wrote. “I am excited to work alongside the Wittington Ventures team as we shape this new chapter and support entrepreneurs tackling some of the most urgent and meaningful challenges of our time.”
He will be working with former MaRS Discovery District colleague Leah Perry, who joined the Canadian Innovation Fund as a senior associate last month.
Perry came to Wittington Ventures after spending four years focusing on cleantech at MaRS. She most recently served as the Toronto non-profit innovation hub’s senior manager of cleantech. Prior to that, she spent six years working with Export Development Canada.
In an interview with BetaKit, Wittington Ventures managing partner Jim Orlando said that the firm was attracted to Ali and Perry’s experience investing in and supporting early-stage Canadian cleantech and healthtech startups at MaRS.
“We needed to beef up our expertise in the areas I just mentioned, and they’re great fits for what we’re doing,” Orlando said, adding that he does not anticipate any more hires directly related to the firm’s Canadian Innovation Fund at this point.
While Wittington Ventures will continue to operate as one investment team across its funds going forward, Ali and Perry have been tasked with focusing specifically on the Canadian Innovation Fund. With both of them now on board, Orlando said Wittington Ventures is refining its strategy for the fund, which has made one investment to date, and noted it could back as many as 10 to 15 companies in total.
Wittington Ventures is the tech-focused VC investment arm of the billionaire Canadian Weston family’s holding company, Wittington Investments, which controls Canadian grocery and pharmacy chains Loblaws and Shoppers Drug Mart.
The Westons have donated to health and environmental causes for years. Earlier this year, Wittington Investments revealed plans to back innovative startups in both areas through a new Canadian Innovation Fund alongside its first investment in Toronto’s Grey Matter Neurosciences, which develops medical devices that facilitate therapeutic brain stimulation for treatment of Alzheimer’s and other diseases.
Grey Matter Neurosciences is licensing ultrasound tech developed at the Sunnybrook Research Institute, thanks in part to funding from the charitable Weston Family Foundation.
Wittington Ventures claimed at the time that all profits would be reinvested in companies or used to support Canadian climate and healthcare philanthropy.
Wittington Ventures’ website lists 15 portfolio companies, only three of which appear to be Canadian: GoConfirm, Odaia, and Grey Matter. The firm’s portfolio also includes Gatik and Truvian, which have respectively worked with Loblaws and Shoppers Drug Mart.
Orlando told BetaKit that the firm plans to take a more focused approach to Canada with its Canadian Innovation Fund, noting that the intention is to “invest in Canada to help Canadians” by backing local companies looking to turn intellectual property (IP) from domestic research institutions into marketable products.
Orlando said the firm established the Canadian Innovation Fund to support early-stage startups commercializing “breakthrough research” in climate and healthcare in Canada—areas aligned with the Weston Family Foundation’s priorities, which he noted has donated millions annually to funding research in climate and healthcare, with a focus on Canada.
“All too often,” that research is either not commercialized or that IP “leaks out of the country” because it is licensed by foreign companies, Orlando said. “We’re trying to address that gap.”
Orlando said Ali and Perry are “hitting the ground running,” since Wittington Ventures and other Weston-backed entities have already been tracking this research closely for years. “We have awareness of a lot of breakthrough research, in many cases by virtue of this extra lane, and we want to go and look for more opportunities,” he said.
Ali and Perry’s appointments follow some other recent personnel changes at Wittington Ventures, as it makes the final few investments out of its second VC fund and prepares for its third “sometime next year.”
In April, Wittington Ventures promoted partner Megh Gupta—who led its healthcare investment efforts—to managing partner, where he will help oversee the firm’s overall strategy alongside Orlando. The firm also elevated director Qasim Mohammad to partner to support the firm’s increased interest in consumer-related investing, bumped healthcare-focused associate Carley-Rose Horowitz up to senior associate, and hired ex-Foresite Capital investor Austin Nalen Sprole as director.
Last month, Wittington Investments revealed that it is launching a $100-million fund to back Canadian food producers.
Earlier this month, Wittington Ventures added former Plug and Play ventures team associate Tarek El Naggar to its investment team as an associate.
UPDATE (09/11/25): This story has been updated to include additional information and commentary from Wittington Ventures managing partner Jim Orlando.
Feature image courtesy Zeeshan Ali.