Single specialty hospital chains are here to stay: Vishal Bali, executive chairman, Asia Healthcare Holdings

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₹600 crore. AINU is India’s largest hospital network specialising in urology and nephrology care with presence in four cities. In this interview, Vishal Bali, AHH’s Executive Chairman, talks about how investments in single speciality networks, has been a fruitful strategy.

Bali has over 30 years of experience in the healthcare ecosystem. Earlier, he was the Group CEO of Fortis Healthcare Limited and the CEO and MD of Wockhardt Hospitals. Excerpts: We started AHH in FY17 as a single specialty healthcare delivery platform that would invest, transform, and grow a spectrum of single specialty enterprises under one holding company.

The key differential is that the AHH team would take both operating and execution responsibilities in each of the companies, along with the CEOs and their operating teams. This platform approach to growing and scaling healthcare delivery enterprises and leveraging operating capabilities of key functions across the platform is unprecedented in the healthcare sector. The rapid scale and unit economics that we have achieved in each of our enterprises are proof points of this thesis playing out.

We grew Cancer Treatment Services International (CTSI) from one oncology hospital to 11 in three years, the Motherhood Women & Children’s hospital network has grown from three to 22 hospitals in six years and Nova IVF has scaled from 18 centres to 70 centres in just three years. In each of our companies, we have taken majority control at a relatively early stage of the journey but each one of them has had an excellent clinical differentiation. I believe that this foundation is a key enabler for us to grow the building blocks of inducting a top-class clinical and management team, market-leading customer service