Investment

Vaatsalya Healthcare Gets Funding from Oasis Fund & Seedfund

Vaatsalya wants to utilise the fund to build 20 hospitals across India

Dr Ashwin Naik

Vaatsalya Healthcare, a pioneer in semi-urban and rural healthcare in India, announced funding from Oasis Fund and Seedfund to expand hospital network across India. The investment was led by Oasis Fund, a Luxemburg-based investment fund with a successful track record of investing in emerging enterprises across the world. Vaatsalya is expanding the Vaatsalya Hospitals network from seven hospitals in Karnataka to 20 hospitals across India. Existing investor, Seedfund also participated in this round of funding.

Said Dr Ashwin Naik, Founder and CEO, Vaatsalya, "Our goal is to revolutionise the existing healthcare system in India by focusing primarily on providing high quality healthcare services to semi-urban and rural India. We are fortunate to have found partners like Oasis and Seedfund who share our passion and vision." He added, "Indian metros and urban areas have access to some of the world's best healthcare facilities, whereas the semi-urban and rural areas often do not have access to basic healthcare services. Vaatsalya aims to plug this gap and provide basic and secondary care in the areas where such services or quality services do not exist. Vaatsalya's goal is to be the leading low-cost but high quality service provider in its geographies of operations."

Vaatsalya provides affordable primary and secondary healthcare services across seven districts in Karnataka and is currently managing 300 beds. Recipient of the Sankalp Award 2009 for Healthcare Inclusion, Winner of the BiD challenge India 2007 and LRAMP award 2008 in the enterprise category, Vaatsalya focuses on the core specialities of gynaecology, paediatrics, general surgery and general medicine at each of its hospitals. In addition, depending on the unmet needs of the local community specialised services like dialysis, ICUs, paediatric surgery, diabetology and neurosurgery are added to the service portfolio.

"Our hospital network is proud to have attracted the best medical teams from across India, who have shown a keen desire and passion to work in our hospitals, particularly doctors who were born and grew up in semi-urban India. Our strategy is to tap into the entrepreneurial spirit of such doctors and work with them on expanding our network. Over the next two years, in addition to our greenfield projects, we will be actively exploring options to partner with existing nursing homes and hospitals that share our philosophy," added COO and co-founder Dr Veerendra Hiremath.

Said Jean-Philippe de Schrevel from Bamboo Finance, "Oasis Fund and its advisory company Bamboo Finance are proud to be partnering with Vaatsalya to increase healthcare access in India. We created Oasis to support commercially viable social ventures and build on the success we had with BlueOrchard in the area of microfinance. We are working with Vaatsalya on a strategy to increase its outreach to low-income patients by providing a link with microfinance institutions and micro health insurance programs."

Said Bharati Jacob from Seedfund, "We are proud to be associated with Vaatsalya as its model has shown that low cost doesn't necessarily mean low quality and that scalable and profitable business model can be built while providing lower priced health care services. We believe Vaatsalya will revolutionise low cost delivery model."

EH News Bureau