Medwell Ventures Private Ltd which manages Nightingales specialty home healthcare services in India, gets a significant minority stake from Fidelity Growth Partners India (FGPI) and Fidelity Biosciences, Boston valued at $10 million. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

BMR Advisors acted as the sole financial consultant and BMR Legal were legal advisors to Medwell Ventures for this transaction. This will see Dr. Prem Pavoor, managing director, FGPI and Dr. Ketan Patel from Fidelity Biosciences to be part of the company’s leadership team.

The company has now put in place an aggressive growth plan to consolidate its presence in the southern India and make a foray into the western region.

The expansion would also see Medwell increase its workforce from the current 300 to another 150 personnel which includes clinicians, nurses and other support staff. The company has evolved an employee centric model ensuring retention and future career growth.

The one-year three month old Medwell has been an early mover in the home healthcare delivery segment. It has three centres in Bengaluru, a recent operation in Hyderabad and is currently in the advanced stages of a Mumbai launch. Plans are to increase its subscriber base to cover over 500,000 families.

The company would look to raise another $50 million within 3-5 years, to gear up to enter 10 metro cities and then chalk out access to Tier 2 and 3 cities.

Home healthcare has huge scope for growth and is garnering interest from the investor community. Both FPGI and Fidelity Biosciences have a strong presence in funding technology and healthcare. “Over the next 15 years, chronic diseases will cost India Rs.280 trillion. We have a strong conviction that specialty home healthcare is one of the key solutions to manage its high cost”, said Vishal Bali, chairman and co-founder, Medwell Ventures.

The size of the Indian home healthcare sector is around $2.5 billion as against US which is $125 billion and Japan’s $25 billion which is largely driven by an ageing population. In India, Medwell, Portea Medical in Mumbai, Indian Home Healthcare(IHHC) at Chennai and Health Care at Home (HCAH), Delhi compete with over 90 per cent of an unorganized sector. Much of the future growth would be propelled by health insurance. “Our key differentiators are subscription model, training and comprehensive therapeutic offering” said Lalit Pai, CEO, Nightingales.

Commenting on the Fidelity transaction, Dr Pavoor, said that there was tremendous potential for a clinically focused and chronic care healthcare services at home.

Indian healthcare is scaling up in terms of technology which includes communication and data management. Our with Philips for respiratory gadgets, diagnostics with Elbit and Anand besides MedPlus for pharmacy supplies indicate the effectiveness of our service delivery. The intent is offer technology-led solutions to a growing customer base across India in a consistent and scalable manner, said Dr Ferzaan Engineer, joint-chairman and co-founder, Medwell Ventures.