Kateřina Janků sold her IT giant, now funds preterm birth research

Kateřina Janků, former co-owner of tech giant Moravia IT, has founded the Neoli fund together with her husband, gynecologist Petr Janků, to research the causes of premature birth. This year alone the couple will put 13 million crowns of their own family money into the effort — almost half of all cases of preterm birth still have no identified cause.

Kateřina Janků studied English and Hungarian, and in the early 1990s joined her family's translation agency, where she convinced her parents that the future lay in software localization and technology. That small company grew into Moravia IT, a global tech firm and one of the biggest players in its field. She sold her stakes in the business in 2015 and 2017, when the company's revenue reached almost four billion crowns.

After selling the business, Janků turned to investing, real estate and philanthropy. Together with her husband, she supported charities such as People in Need (Člověk v tísni), the Partnerství Foundation, and Brno's Husa na provázku theatre. Over time, though, the couple decided they wanted to do more than just donate money — they wanted to build something of their own, combining Kateřina's management experience with the medical expertise of Petr, who for many years headed the Czech Republic's largest maternity ward, at University Hospital Brno.

Before founding the Neoli fund last year, the couple spent nearly a year and a half studying who around the world works on the problem of preterm birth, where the research centers are, and how the situation differs from country to country. They found that Czechia has organizations that help families affected by premature birth, but no structure that systematically searches for its causes.

Almost seven percent of children in Czechia are born prematurely, and the earlier a child is born, the higher the risk of complications and serious consequences. According to Petr Janků, in roughly half of cases doctors cannot pinpoint an exact cause at all. Known risk factors include infections, inflammation, immune disorders and maternal illnesses such as preeclampsia, high blood pressure and diabetes, and the number of complications is rising as the average age of first-time mothers increases and more pregnancies follow IVF.

The Neoli fund is also calculating what preterm birth costs society as a whole, in order to gauge the burden on the state. As Kateřina Janků puts it, what matters to her and her husband is not simply funding research, but making a real contribution so that children born too early live longer, healthier lives.