A combination of poor last-mile healthcare delivery and an easy access to technology has made telemedicine a strong growth story in the healthcare industry, according to Amit Varma, Managing Partner at Quadria Capital.
However, telemedicine, while taking the load off conventional healthcare in the short-term, will not provide an alternative to brick-and-mortar healthcare service providers in the long-run, Mr. Varma added.
Private investor
Quadria Capital is a private equity investor in healthcare, focussing on two main geographies — South Asia and South-East Asia. Most of the company’s investment in South Asia is concentrated in India.
The company’s total portfolio size is $500 million.
“While there will be an explosion of apps, telemedicine, point of care testing, we will still need to put together a lot of brick and mortar to allow this to take place,” Mr. Varma said.
“While the advent of the e-platform is laudable and serves as a stop-gap, we will still need infrastructure.”
Last-mile delivery
“There is a complete lack of last-mile delivery (infrastructure),” Mr. Varma said.
“It is very difficult to access healthcare in semi-urban or rural areas. Along with that is the technological revolution. So, people may not have potable water or toilets, but they do have a smartphone. The third aspect is that the e-commerce space has exploded, so people are looking at various innovations to bridge the gap in healthcare access.”
“If you look at healthcare alone, it is growing at 15 per cent year-on-year,” he said. “But if you look at this kind of innovative growth, it is easily growing at 30-40 per cent per year.”
Medical tourism
The other key growth driver in the healthcare sector is medical tourism, where nationals of other countries visit India to take advantage of quality healthcare at affordable prices, Mr. Varma added.
“I call it medical value travel,” he said.
“Customers are coming to access our facilities and are willing to pay a slight premium. This is growing on very strongly on a year-on-year basis.”
“Of our portfolio companies, this area is contributing 10 per cent of revenue.
And this will continue to grow for a while because places like the Middle East and Africa still do no have adequate core infrastructure,” Mr. Varma said.
