Research Outline

Indian Heathcare Startups M&A Market

Goals

To provide an overview of the M&A market for healthcare startups in India, specifically an overview of India's typical exit pathways for healthcare startups and a list of potential acquirers for a chain of reproductive health clinics and diagnostics laboratories.

Early Findings

  • In 2018, there were 4,892 health tech startups in India. The startups generally fall into one of the following eleven categories: online pharmacy, telemedicine, personal health management, home healthcare, fitness & wellness, diagnostics, biotech R&D, medical devices, healthcare IT, biopharma and genomics.
  • Between 2014 and 2018, Indian health tech startups raised $504 million in funding, with the Indian healthcare market estimated to have a value of $372 billion by 2022.
  • In 2018, there were 69 deals relating to health tech startups in India.
  • There are a number of obstacles that intervene between a startup and its exit strategy among Indian health tech startups. These obstacles include:
    • Product and platform becoming a service business. This is usually a result of a lack of funding and ongoing revenue pressures.
    • Geographical and environmental challenges.
  • Potential exit strategies include:
    • IPO: It should be noted the Indian stock exchange has somewhat dated laws, requiring a history of profitability before listing.
    • Merger
    • Acquisition
  • Impact Biomedicines has one of the most successful exits in the diagnostic laboratory space in recent years, having been acquired by Calgene in 2018 for approximately $7 billion.
  • It was reported on 18 January 2021, one of the leading diagnostic healthcare providers, Metropolis Healthcare was to acquire Hitech Diagnostic Centre Pvt Ltd for Rs 511 crores.

Summary

  • In our initial hour of research, we have accessed the availability of information in the public domain relative to the research goals.
  • There is a huge volume of material available on the Indianhealth techh startup landscape. In our initial hour of research, we have identified the three key exit strategies for Indian health techh startups. Further research would provide more detailed overviews of each exit strategy and look for other exit pathways.
  • We have also identified one potential acquirer for a company of the nature described in the research documentation.