Beyond Metros

Private hospitals, offering quality healthcare, are proliferating in Tier-II and Tier-III towns.

- Gina Krishnan

Private, for-profit, high quality healthcare has been permeating Tier-II and Tier-III towns in the last decade or so, just as it did in the metros in the decade before that. The advent of corporate hospital chains across cities really began with Apollo Hospitals in Chennai in the early 1980s. Having first set up branches in the metros of South India, Apollo Hospitals ventured north, reaching Delhi in 1996, with its model soon followed by a host of others – Max Healthcare, Fortis Healthcare, Medanta – The Medicity, and more. Now the same trend is seen in towns as modest as Tinsukhia, Hubli or Darbhanga.

Less flashy than their metro counterparts and less expensive as well, these hospitals have not only brought medical super specialties to the Indian heartland, but also attracted private equity (PE) investment. Take Paras Hospital, which was set up in Gurgaon, in 2006, by Dr Dharmendar Nagar, one of six brothers who also run Paras Dairy. In 2013, it opened a 350-bed hospital in Patna with a local partner and has since started a third hospital in Darbhanga, 145 km from Patna, a Tier-III town with a population of just over 300,000. With neurology, cardiology, oncology and orthopaedics as their main super specialties, the Paras hospitals have drawn investment of ₹275 crore from PE firm Creador Advisors.