The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has agreed to invest $10 million (Rs 68.7 crore) in DCDC Health Services Pvt. Ltd, which operates dialysis centres under the brand Deep Chand Dialysis Centre.
The investment will help the company expand its network to more than 180 centres from around 100 in India, and enter Sri Lanka, the ADB said in a statement.
The regional development bank will also help the company in capacity building, including developing human resources, improving systems and processes, and standardising care quality, it added.
DCDC Health was founded by Aseem Garg in 2009. It offers dialysis care at its public-private partnership (PPP) centres in government hospitals, along with its centers at private hospitals and two standalone clinics. The company has centres in Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
The company had raised its first external funding of close to $5 million from UK-based CDC Group-backed Pragati India Fund in December 2014.
Garg told VCCircle that Pragati India Fund remains invested in the company though it did not participate in this funding round.
The market for dialysis treatment in India is dominated by small, local players and there are only a handful of national players to cater to a growing market.
Around 1.3 million Indians need to undergo regular dialysis, with an average age of around 40 years old compared to around 60 globally. However, only about 10% of the patients undergo dialysis, partially due to insufficient supply of dialysis services, the statement noted. Overall, demand in India is almost 11 times that of supply, while it is 16 times in Sri Lanka.
The sector got a shot in the arm when the government said in the 2016 budget that funds for the National Dialysis Services Programme will be made available through the PPP mode under the National Health Mission.
Private investors have since made bets more aggressively on the segment.
NephroPlus Health Services Pvt. Ltd raised Rs 100 crore (nearly $15 million) from private equity firm SeaLink Capital Partners and existing investor International Finance Corporation in a Series C round of fundraise in August 2016. The following month, Germany’s Fresenius Medical Care AG bought an 85% stake in Indian dialysis services company Sandor Nephro Services Pvt. Ltd, which runs the Sparsh Nephrocare chain.