Mumbai: Asia Healthcare Holdings, a leading healthcare investment platform backed by Singapore’s GIC and TPG, will invest Rs 400 crore in Asian Institute of Nephrology and Urology (AINU), one of the largest single-speciality chains focused on uro-nephro care, in the next 4-5 years, AHH’s executive chairman Vishal Bali told ET.
AHH, which has currently over 70% stake in AINU, will invest this fund for growth and expansion of the urology and nephrology chain with plans to open 13 hospitals from current seven in the next 3-4 years – with most planned in Tier 2 towns such as Patna, Bhubaneshwar, Coimbatore, and others.
The planned outlay of Rs 400 crore will take AHH’s full investment in the chain to Rs 1,000 crore since FY24, making it one of the largest investments in the single-speciality format in the urology-nephrology space.
“Rs 600 crore of our capital is in AINU and there is another Rs 400 crore outlay between now and FY30. That makes a total of Rs 1,000 crore investment that we will put behind this specialty,” said Bali. “We will invest the fund in the growth creation of a much bigger footprint for AINU,” he added.
“We see a big opportunity at AHH in the creation and exponential growth of single specialty enterprises in the Tier 2 cities,” said Bali.
Currently, AINU is present in seven locations including two Metro cities in Hyderabad and Chennai. All its other hospitals are in Tier 2 cities including places like Vizag and Siliguri. While its flagship centre in Hyderabad has 150 beds capacity, Chennai has 100 beds and the others in tier 2 are mostly 75 bedders.
“We are looking to ramp up the clinical capabilities and services in each of these hospitals. Robotic programme is an important service that we have – currently we have two centres offering this service – we want to start ramping it up in other centres,” said Sandeep Guduru, CEO, AINU.
“In our new centre in Banjara Hills in Hyderabad the focus is on setting up sub-specialities such as female neurology, paediatric neurology, etc. That’s also a large part of our growth capex,” said Guduru.
For FY 26-27, AHH has earmarked an outlay of Rs 150 crore capital expenditure in AINU to open 3-4 new urology and nephrology hospitals across India.
India’s market for single-specialty hospitals is set to more-than-double to $31 billion in three-four years from the current $15 billion. Most of it is private equity-led expansion into small towns and hinterlands where demand for quality healthcare services is growing rapidly, according to a report from investment bank Avendus.
“There are certain specialties that have come out of the multispecialty format and created a growth trajectory of their own,” said Bali.
Explaining the fund’s investment strategy, he said “We are gung-ho about single specialty as it gives us the opportunity to scale quickly, our return on capital employed (ROCE) are much higher than what the multispecialty institutions see. From an India context this format will work very well because there is a replication opportunity.”
The market share of single specialty hospitals, catering to segments like eyecare, oncology, fertility treatments and mother & child-care, urology and nephrology and dental care is expected to rise to 40% of the total healthcare market by 2028 from the current 30%, according to Avendus.
