Nephrocare India, a Kolkata-based kidney care provider, has recently achieved a significant milestone by securing Rs 8.08 crore in a pre-initial public offering (IPO) funding round. This investment was led by notable figures such as Deepak Parekh, the former chairman of HDFC; Bharat Shah, chairman of HDFC Securities; and Rajendra Agarwal, the founder and managing director of Macleods Pharmaceuticals.
The funding is a crucial step for Nephrocare India, which was founded in 2014, as it aims to expand its footprint across India. The company currently operates three kidney care clinics in West Bengal and a flagship holistic healthcare facility in Salt Lake, Kolkata. The capital raised will be strategically used to establish 300 comprehensive kidney care clinics nationwide over the next eight to ten years, following a hub-and-spoke strategy. This expansion plan includes the immediate goal of launching four centers by the end of the current fiscal year, with a longer-term target of setting up 22 high-end comprehensive kidney care facilities across the country by March 2026.
This expansion is particularly significant given the high demand for kidney care in India. The country is known as the ‘Diabetes Capital of the World’, adding about 250,000 new patients requiring dialysis each year due to advanced kidney failure. With an estimated one out of every eleven Indians likely to suffer from renal failure, predominantly due to diabetes and hypertension, the need for accessible and quality kidney care is immense. Currently, India has around 12,881 haemodialysis centres, which is insufficient given the estimated seventy million patients suffering from various chronic kidney diseases.
The success of this pre-IPO funding round is a notable step forward for Nephrocare India in its mission to bridge the gap in kidney care availability in India and to positively impact the lives of close to one million patients suffering from chronic kidney disease.