Medwell Ventures to leverage Fidelity investment to expand network

In just around a year since its founding, Medwell Ventures, a company focused on specialty home healthcare services, announced on Thursday, June 4 that Fidelity Growth Partners India  and Fidelity Biosciences, Boston had acquired a minority stake for $10 million or around Rs 60 crore in Medwell Ventures.

Speaking to Business Today, Vishal Bali, Chairman and Co-founder of Medwell Ventures, which is the operator of Nightingales specialty home healthcare services, said the investment (the deal was closed a day earlier) was crucial not just for the company but also for the growth the new healthcare category of out-of-hospital, home healthcare services.

For Medwell, he said, "This investment will help Medwell grow in its current geographies, which is Bengaluru and Hyderabad, and begin operations in Mumbai sometime in August, and in the next three years, take Medwell's presence across six cities in all with deeper consolidation and concentration in each city."

The plan, he says, is to roll out Nightingales specialty home healthcare as a pan-India provider. The company, he says, has grown rapidly in the last one year and today has 300 medical and paramedical staff and a total of 85,000 medical visits undertaken in all with 8,000 members subscribing to the Nightingales network.

Medwell Ventures is focused on providing services in chronic diseases such as congestive heart failure, stroke management, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorders (COPD), wound care management for diabetics, dementia care, Alzheimer's care and arthritic pain management.

A company press release quotes Bali as saying: "The healthcare delivery ecosystem in India needs innovative solutions with scalable business models. Over the next 15 years, chronic diseases will cost India Rs 280 trillion. We have a strong conviction that speciality home healthcare is one of the key solutions to managing the rising trend of high cost chronic diseases in the country."

On the transaction, Prem Pavoor, Managing Director at Fidelity Growth Partners India (FGPI) says, "This investment reflects FGPI's keen interest in partnering with distinctive management teams to build leaders within still emerging segments in the healthcare and life sciences industry in the country."