Healthcare delivery business continues to attract investor attention. It becomes hotter when the business is started by someone who has done this before not once, but twice. Medfort Hospitals Pvt. Ltd, a healthcare delivery business focused on eye and diabetes started by serial entrepreneur Dr GSK Velu, has raised Rs 60 crore ($13.3 million) from TVS Shriram Growth Fund and ePlanet Ventures.
TSGF, a joint venture between TVS Capital and Shriram Group, has invested about Rs 50 crore for a significant minority stake, while the remaining investment has come in from ePlanet Ventures.
Medfort is the third venture of Dr. GSK Velu, who was earlier credited with building two other companies - Metropolis Healthcare, a chain of diagnostic laboratories, and Trivitron Healthcare, a medical devices company.
Healthcare delivery has been considered a growth area as the space has been occupied by mostly small hospitals barring one or two large hospital chains such as Apollo Hospitals and Max Healthcare, and lately Fortis Healthcare. Private equity firms has been looking at this space since 2005 when Warburg Pincus invested in Max Healthcare. In the last five years, there had been about 30 deals in healthcare delivery alone and about $650 million (disclosed value) have been invested by PE firms in the space.
As for Medfort, it's going to focus on eyecare and diabetics where not many organised players have come in except Vasan Healthcare which has been funded by Sequoia Capital India.
Dr Velu, Chairman, Medfort Hospitals, said that Medfort would primarily focus on creating a national eye care/diabetic network across the emerging markets of the world. There are synergies between vision care and diabetes care, Velu said.
The company will be managed by a professional management team led by Gaurav Malhotra as CEO. Malhotra is a senior healthcare professional with experience across different product categories like medical devices, diagnostics, equipment and pharmaceuticals products. He was previously working as business head (India & SAARC) of Bausch & Lomb and Johnson & Johnson Medical.
Gopal Srinivasan, Chairman and Managing Director, TVS Capital, said: "Eye care and diabetes treatment across India have underserved patient populations and present good growth dynamics."
Gaurav Malhotra, CEO, Medfort Hospitals said “Medfort has identified diabetes care and vision care as the segments to target initially. In a market with growing opportunities, there are very few organised players."
This is the fifth investment of TSGF which has also invested in Nine dot Nine Mediaworx, TVS Logistics, Dusters / Total Solutions and Landmark.