Private equity firm Lightrock India has invested $15 million for a majority stake in Gurugram-based psychiatric hospital Sukoon in one of the largest deals in the mental health space in India.
Founded in 2020 by Vidit Bahri and Kanishk Gupta, Sukoon provides inpatient and outpatient care for all psychiatric and psychological problems through its team of psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, counsellors and vocational therapists.
With this investment, the firm plans to scale to multiple locations, expand specialist services and work with other providers in this space to create a therapeutic behavioural health platform in India, the company said in a statement.
“We have always believed in putting our patient care and experience at the centre of our protocols and have achieved recognition for the leading services we provide in Delhi. We are currently expanding our services to Bengaluru and Mumbai as a first step of a pan-India programme of scale,” Bahri and Gupta said.
The company is operating in an industry, which struggles with shortage of specialists to provide care, limiting the choices for the patients for quality care. Last year, Sukoon treated over 11,000 patients suffering from a spectrum of conditions across inpatient and outpatient services.
“We are excited to be working with Lightrock India and Saleem to build on our vision,” they added.
As a part of the transaction, Saleem Asaria, partner at Lightrock India, will take the role of Executive Chairman of Sukoon. He has previously built and led Europe’s Cambian Group. Bahri and Gupta will take up senior leadership roles.
“We believe that behavioural health is an important and pivotal sector to address towards building a large and healthy society. Sukoon, together with the existing ecosystem, capital and specialist expertise, both national and global, can help create one of the leading mental health systems in the world,” he said.
“This investment is a first step towards realising our vision to build India’s first and largest therapeutic behavioural health platform,” he added.
