Global private equity fuels Indian healthcare’s push into smaller cities
Indian healthcare has emerged as a private equity hotspot as global buyout groups pour money into local hospital chains to fuel their expansion into the country’s smaller cities. Private healthcare providers are using foreign backing to expand into lesser-served Indian towns, seeking to capitalise on shortcomings in public medical infrastructure. “There was a misnomer people had that it’s not viable to run hospitals in lower-tier cities,” said Varun Khanna, group chief executive at Blackstone-backed Aster DM Quality Care, which has 39 hospitals and more than 10,000 beds. The chain — which was formed from a merger of four hospital brands, including some that Blackstone had acquired in 2023 — plans to increase the number of beds by another 5,000 in the next three to four years, with a focus on underserved regions. “Indian cities are not like western cities,” Khanna told the FT. “A small city in India also has a million population. If you look at an Australian city — a large Australian ci