Shalil Gupta, Chief Business Officer, Mosaic Digital in Conversation with Hari buggana, Founder and Chairman, InvAscent.
VCCircle hosted the 15th edition of its Healthcare Summit in Mumbai on October 20, 2023. Experts deliberated on a variety of topics ranging from increasing healthcare access in underserved regions of India to the use of automation and AI in managing healthcare delivery.
Mr Hari Buggana (Hari), Founder and Chairman, InvAscent, India’s leading provider of private equity growth capital to companies in India’s life sciences sector, set the tone for the summit in his welcome address. He highlighted that the demand supply gap in the Indian Healthcare Sector will require investments of over USD 6 Billion to bridge. He said that the future of Indian Healthcare will be shaped by several macro trends. On the one hand, he said, the intersection between the secular trends of rising household incomes and increasing urbanization will determine the loci of healthcare investment opportunities. While on the other, growing penetration of health insurance will drive healthcare consumption. He also touched upon the role digitization will play in reducing information asymmetry, thereby creating pricing pressure and bringing down healthcare costs.
Shalil Gupta (Shalil) and Hari continued their conversation on investments during the fireside chat that followed. Responding to Shalil’s question on trends in healthcare investments in India, Hari mentioned the emergence of single-specialty focused healthcare service providers as a segment of choice for investors. He pointed out that InvAscent pioneered investments in this segment and has supported the emergence of several current and future market leaders in areas such as cancer care (HCG Global), eye care (Dr Agarwal), Dermatology (Oliva), infertility (Oasis) and Neonatology and Paediatric Intensive Care (Ankura). He said that such super-specialty networks make healthcare services accessible beyond Tier-I cities. Models with superior unit economics have delivered stellar returns for investors, he added.
Shalil and Hari then talked about opportunities in the MedTech space. Hari said that this industry holds the promise of emerging as one where products are designed and produced in India for the world. The wealth of data that device developers have access to in India helps them rapidly prototype and develop products. This industry, he said, could lay the foundation for the emergence of VC funds dedicated to supporting innovation in this space. Such funds, however, will have to bake in longer adoption cycles and brace for regulatory challenges and oversight of businesses they fund, he added.
Shalil and Hari also discussed the growth of digital-first healthcare businesses in India. Hari said that the key to success here was monitoring and controlling the costs of customer acquisition.
Responding to the final question about the one aspect InvAscent considers critical when making investments, Hari said that the Promoters and the team mattered the most. A dynamic Promoter Group supported by a good team will be able to exploit business opportunities effectively while navigating the challenges posed by this competitive and highly regulated sector.
