Vishal Bali, former group CEO of Fortis Healthcare, has joined hands with promoters of healthcare research firm Cytespace Research Pvt Ltd, to float a specialty home healthcare services venture under Medwell Ventures Pvt Ltd. The new venture has also acquired Bangalore-based Nightingales Homes Health Services for an undisclosed amount to kick-start its operations.
At present, Nightingales provides 53,000 patient bedside nursing days per annum, 24,000 medical services per year and has more than 5,000 families subscribing to its annual care plans. Medwell plans to expand these services and increase its focus on segments like pulmonology, cardiology, metabolic diseases, neurological health, orthopaedics, geriatrics, rehabilitation and post-operative surgical site management.
Medwell will invest around $15-20 million in the business in the next three-five years and plans to establish a network in 10 Indian metros which will serve over a million families in the coming year. The company will be supported by a cloud-based technology platform and protocol-driven services in specialised therapeutic areas.
Further, the company will offer additional services which will include remote health monitoring, tele-health, diagnostics, rehabilitation and wellness therapeutics, which will be launched gradually.
“An ageing population, shortage of hospital beds and the need for continuity of care pre/post-hospitalisation create a strong demand for professionally driven specialty home healthcare services. The future of patient-centric care will incorporate speciality home healthcare as a key element” said Vishal Bali, chairman of Medwell.
Co-founder of Cytespace and Medwell, Lalit Pai is CEO of this venture. Other promoter of the company is Ferzaan Engineer, chairman of Cytespace Research and co-chairman of Medwell.
Bali joins TPG
After leaving Fortis, Bali has his hands full as he is also joining TPG Growth, one of world’s largest private equity funds as Asia head for healthcare, according to a report by Business Standard. Bali confirmed his appointment in the report.
While TPG Growth has assets under management of around $3.5 billion, the parent company TPG, has assets of around $55.3 billion. In the healthcare segment TPG has invested in companies like Sutures while in other segments it has invested in paper packaging company Flexituff International, application software company ASG Transact and real estate development company Shriram Properties, among others.
A management graduate from University of Mumbai, Bali started his career as a management trainee in Wockhardt Hospitals Group where he became chief executive as the company grew to be India’s third-largest hospital chain. In 2009, Bali moved to Fortis when Wockhardt was acquired by brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Singh. Bali grew in rank to become Group CEO of Fortis Healthcare Ltd where he led company’s international expansion. Last year, the group announced that Bali would leave the company in March this year to start his own venture.
During his stint with Fortis, the group had made a major overseas move by acquiring stake in Singapore-headquartered Parkway Holdings from TPG. Singh brothers later got into a takeover battle with Malaysian sovereign wealth fund over the control of Parkways and eventually bowed out of the firm.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
