India’s healthcare industry today is at an inflection point and is witnessing major digital transformation. The whole industry is growing at a CAGR of 22% and is projected to reach $372 billion by 2022 on the back of growing and ageing population, economic development, increasing health awareness and Covid induced consumer and behavioral changes. The embedment of AI & related digital solutions is expected to rapidly empower the patient care continuum, both inside and outside of the hospital. Health Enterprises are also investing in innovative services and creating low cost digital & device solutions that believe in the outcome of creating affordability to the masses, and not just specific pockets of the population. For example, Microsoft has tied up with organizations like Narayana Health, Forus Health, Apollo Hospitals, SRL Diagnostics to cover a broad range of use cases from diabetic retinopathy to histopathology – all of the diseases, which will now leverage analytics at scale, in-order to improve patient outcomes.
Despite such advancements, India’s healthcare system continues to combat a plethora of challenges such as the lack of scalable infrastructure, shortage of efficient and trained manpower. The outbreak of pandemic has questioned the foundation of India’s healthcare system. There is a gap of 0.35 doctors, 0.8 nurses and 2.1 hospital beds per 1000 population as recommended by WHO. India has the lowest spend as a proportion of GDP on healthcare (In 2020-21, India spent 1.8% of its GDP on healthcare), while US spends over 16%, Japan, Canada, Germany etc. spend over 10% of their GDP on healthcare. There is also a huge disparity, in terms of infrastructure and quality of care, across states and rural-urban settings. About 75% of India’s population living outside urban cities has access to only 31.5% hospitals and 16% hospital beds.
These glaring gaps are expected to be addressed and aided by digital health solutions, and the use of technologies that improve accessibility. As per Edge Insights, the healthcare sector has attracted more than $10 billion investments from private equity investors and IT spend of the sector is expected to be $790 mn in 2021, an increase of 73% from last year.
To discuss the experiences of various stakeholders and learn the lessons to face challenges of the future, VCCircle is organising the 13th edition of the Healthcare Investment Summit on Novemebr 17, 2021 on a virtual platform.
By Shalil Gupta, CBO, Mosaic Digital
The gap in access to healthcare is changing the landscape of healthcare infrastructure and revolutionizing the digital healthcare technological aspect of healthcare delivery in India. Digital healthcare such as telemedicine, mHealth, EHR/EMR systems, healthcare Analytics etc. are improving the access and quality of care. The demand for digital health is increasing, as it continues to position itself as a way to bridge the gap between physicians and patients. The digital health market is projected to grow by ~13x to become a $16 bn opportunity by FY25. The segment was already picking up Indian market, however, with government initiatives such as implementation of NDHM and State Telemedicine Network, the total number of investments now continue to grow at a geometrical rate.
By Dr. RS Sharma, CEO, National Health Authority, MoHFW (Govt. of India)
The outbreak of pandemic has underscored the importance of healthcare supply chain as the healthcare sector faced several challenges. Healthcare providers were left in dark as they mostly relied on just-in-time procurement strategies and were unable to predict critical supply shortages or find alternative solutions due to lack of industry-wide data sharing. How the access of right data, right supply-chain strategies and management practices can help to optimize scarce resources, alleviate shortages, and expand capacity quickly?
Speakers:
Madan Kumar Sampath, Associate Vice President - Supply Chain Management, HealthCare Global Enterprises Ltd.
Prakash Gupta, President (Global Supply Chain and Generics Business), Wockhardt Ltd.
Moderator: Jaidev Rajpal, Partner, McKinsey
As of 2021, there were around 40+ AI solutioning companies that are fully focused on creating digital solutions that cater to a large segment of medical imaging and diagnostics market across the globe. Companies now focus on Radiology, Pathology, & Genomics related AI solutions, primarily with strong B2B models, are promising to showcase outcomes that deal with physician load optimization, enterprise efficiency, improved patient outcomes. Understanding investment opportunities in this fast-growing space, could potentially mean big pay-offs in the future.
Shalil Gupta, Chief Business officer Mosaic Digital in conversation with Pankaj Sahni, CEO, Medanta, The Medicity Hospital
The global healthcare data is expected to grow at a CAGR of 36% by 2025. To make healthcare more equitable, affordable and accessible, there is a need to find ways to unite and generate actionable insights from data. How collaborations and strategic partnerships can harness the data to tackle the issues faced by the sector? With the rise of data, the sector is also increasingly becoming vulnerable to cyber-attacks and frauds. India continues to remain the second-largest country to face cyber-attacks and has already seen a 37% increase in cyber-attacks in November and December of 2020. Moreover, hospitals in India allocate maximum of 5% of their budget which makes them unprepared for cyber-attacks. What are the means to handle the rising cyber threats and data breaches? What actions and initiatives will help the Indian healthcare system to counter cyber-attacks?
Speakers:
Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, Chief Information Officer, Apollo Hospitals
Atanu Roy, Group CIO, Biocon
Dr. Dhaval Shah, Co-Founder, PharmEasy
Moderator: Akshay Garkel, Partner & Leader - Cyber, Grant Thornton Bharat LLP
The Indian healthcare sector is one of the largest sectors in terms of revenue and employment generation. The hospital industry in India, accounting for 80% of the total healthcare market, is witnessing a huge investor demand from both global as well as domestic investors. Given the large population and relatively lower costs, the healthcare industry in India has attracted massive investments to fund advance technology, healthcare delivery, and medical care. What is the current state of healthcare investment landscape in India? What to look-out for whilst evaluating an investment in the healthcare sector? Learning from the experiences of various stakeholders to face challenges of the future.
Speakers:
Dr.Krishna M Ella, Chairman & Managing Director, Bharat Biotech International Limited
Vikram Dendi, Chief Product Officer & GM (Health Futures), Microsoft
Harsh Maggon, Partner – Corporate, Public M&A, Private Equity, TriLegal
Nitish Agrawal, Managing Director, Indium
Moderator: Koustav Chatterjee, Industry Principal, Healthcare and Life Sciences Practice, Frost & Sullivan, North America South East Asia
Workforce challenges in the healthcare industry, such as staffing shortages in hospital specialties and nursing shortages are evident across the globe. Compounding the problem is a scarcity of next-generation skills to guide and support the transformation to becoming patient-centric, insight-driven, and value-focused organizations. When planning for the future of work, health care organizations will need to assess the physical proximity, automation level, and talent category.
Gautam Khanna, CEO, Hinduja Hospital
India’s healthcare industry today is witnessing a major digital transformation. Conversational AI is an exciting new development in the healthcare industry. By augmenting human activities and capabilities, conversational AI for healthcare can unleash immense improvements in healthcare quality, accessibility, and costs.
The healthcare industry is burdened with a staff shortage, particularly in the post-COVID era, and thus struggles to provide quality care and information. Here’s where Conversational AI can step in to fill such gaps. AI-driven chatbots and other applications are helping to usher in a digital revolution in the healthcare industry.
Jaideep Mehta, CEO, Mosaic Digital, Head – Mint in conversation with Beerud Sheth, Co-Founder & CEO, Gupshup
Dr. Ram Sewak Sharma is a former member of the prestigious Indian Administrative Service with a distinguished career in the Government of India and State Governments, leading reforms and leveraging IT to simplify administrative processes. In the process, he has contributed to shaping India's Policies in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). He combines planning and execution skills to ensure that policies work at the ground.
Dr. Sharma is presently serving as the Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Authority responsible for managing the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) – the largest health insurance scheme of the World - and the Ayushman Bharat -Digital Mission. Also, he serves as the Chairperson of the Empowered Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19.
Previously, Dr Sharma headed the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) from August 2015 to September 2020, in which period he brought consumer focus to reaching the telecom and broadcasting services to all pockets of the country. And where the regulatory action may have been insufficient, he advocated policy changes to the government.
He provided thought leadership through initiatives, for example, in adopting Net Neutrality principles in India, use of crowdsourced data to measure service quality, and leveraging blockchain to achieve regulatory outcomes.
He pushed for development of indigenous technologies, keeping the country's needs in mind, e.g., to establish a grid of Wi-Fi hotspots or to make interoperable set-top boxes for television broadcast.
He represented India at various international fora and contributed to the policy space in communication technologies and broadcasting. Before joining the TRAI, Dr Sharma worked as Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, where he spearheaded the Digital India program to develop India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy.
He brought in policies related to open source, open standards, and open APIs in all government projects and shaped eGovernance space by converting silo applications in various sectors to modern, multi-tenanted enterprise systems.
Dr. Sharma supported the development and adoption of several digital products in governance and citizen services, such as eKYC, Digital Locker, eSign, Online Reservation System (ORS) in the hospitals, Digital Attendance, Jeevan Pramaan (a system for issuing Digital Life Certificate for the pensioners) and the Digital Consent Artefact. Importantly, he crafted policies for digital payments that led to the creation of the phenomenally successful UPI payment system in India.
Before joining the Government of India as Secretary, Dr Sharma worked for one year in 2013-14 as Chief Secretary in the Government of Bihar and Jharkhand, where he provided leadership to the entire administrative system of the State. He dealt with law and order, administration of the criminal justice system, revenue system and all other aspects of the work, for which a State Government is responsible under the Constitution. While there, he modernized governance and public service delivery systems using technology in several areas, such as land and property registration systems, municipal governance, Public Distribution System (PDS) and taxation systems.
Dr. Sharma is best known for the role he played as Director General & Mission Director of the Unique Identification Authority of India in the years 2009 – 2013.
Working closely with Mr Nandan Nilekani in overall design and implementation of Aadhaar, he brought to fruition Government of India’s ambitious project to provide a unique identity to all its residents. Today it is the world’s largest identity system, capable of biometrically authenticating every individual resident in the country.
He conceptualized (and later implemented) several services that leveraged the authentication infrastructure for better governance and for bringing in cost-effectiveness in both government and private enterprise.
In his other assignments, he has worked as District Magistrate in several districts in Bihar, Director of Treasuries, Secretary in different departments in the State and as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Govt. of India.
In September 2020 Rupa Publications brought out his book The Making of Aadhaar: World's Largest Identity Platform (ISBN-13: 978-9390356126), which has been very well received.
Dr Sharma holds a PhD from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi; Master’s in Computer Sciences from the University of California, USA; and Master’s in Mathematics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.
Dr. Krishna Ella, a graduate from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, moved to the US for his MS from the University of Hawaii and Ph.D., from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before taking a faculty position at the Medical University of South Carolina-Charleston.
Driven by a vision to develop innovative remedies for developing world healthcare challenges, Dr. Ella returned to India with his wife Suchitra in 1996 to establish Bharat Biotech International Limited, a company that has delivered over 4 billion vaccine doses to the poorest and most underserved in over 116 developing countries through UNICEF, GAVI and other distribution channels.
With over 160 patents, the company has over 16 vaccines in its portfolio and employs around 2600+ people. The company has also received direct and indirect grants of over $165 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, $ 4 million from the Wellcome Trust, and other grants from Governments of UK, Norway and India.
Partnering with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and various agencies since 2001, Dr. Ella ensured that Bharat Biotech successfully developed Rotavac®, India’s first new molecule and the world’s most affordable vaccine against Rotavirus induced diarrhoeal infections and death, with the Honourable Prime Minister of India launching the same to save the lives of many children. Under his leadership, the company also developed and launched Typbar TCV®, the world’s 1st clinically proven and WHO pre-qualified Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine (TCV) and becoming the first company to have proven the efficacy of a Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine through human challenge studies conducted at Oxford University in 2018.
COVAXIN® another recent feather in Dr. Ella’s cap, India's indigenous COVID-19 vaccine by Bharat Biotech is developed in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) - National Institute of Virology (NIV). The indigenous, inactivated vaccine is developed and manufactured in Bharat Biotech's BSL-3 (Bio-Safety Level 3) high containment facility in record time. The vaccine is developed using Whole-Virion Inactivated Vero Cell derived platform technology. Inactivated vaccines do not replicate and are therefore unlikely to revert and cause pathological effects. They contain dead virus, incapable of infecting people but still able to instruct the immune system to mount a defensive reaction against an infection.
Dr. Ella’s contributions to the development of biotechnology in India has been through his association with several technical committees of the Government such as:
He is also a recipient of more than 100 National and International awards, of which few are mentioned below:
JRD TATA Best Entrepreneur of the year
Accolades received
Mr. Gautam Khanna is the CEO of P.D. Hinduja Hospital and MRC, Mumbai and is also the Head of Hinduja College of Nursing. He is also a Managing Committee Member of a Degree College in Mumbai.
An Experienced Business Leader with a rich experience of more than 31 years of successfully Managing Diverse business and creating Sustainable Shareholder Value in Domestic and Internationally Challenging Environments at Hinduja Hospital & 3M, leading Culturally Disparate teams across APAC, Latin America based out of USA and in India. Prior to this role, Mr. Khanna was the Executive Director and Country Business Leader of the 3M Healthcare Businesses for South Asia region and worked in 3M for 22 years in India and abroad.
He has demonstrated Skills & Expertise in Strategy, Board &Stakeholder Management, Business turnaround and Scaleup, Change Management, Team building, Customer Engagement & Industry Advocacy.
Mr. Khanna is an active member of various leading Indian Industry Associations. He has held the position of the Chairperson of FICCI Medical Device Forum, Co-Chairman of AMCHAM Medical Device Committee, Chairperson of India Working Group, Advamed and Secretary of Healthcare Federation of India (Nathealth) and was the National Leader of the Services Provider Forum (Hospitals) for Nathealth, India.
Currently, he is the Co-chair of FICCI Health Services Committee and President of AOH (Association of Hospitals) Mumbai and the Leader of the Western Region for Nathealth, India.
Mr. Khanna is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur (B.Tech) and IIM Calcutta (MBA).
Arvind Sivaramakrishnan is the CIO of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd, India and is based out Chennai, India. He is responsible for the IT strategy and implementation across the Apollo Hospitals group. Arvind has extensive experience in management consulting, architecting, and building solutions for enterprise wide applications. He also leads the digital transformation initiatives at the Apollo Hospitals Groups.
He has led Apollo Hospitals in achieving the prestigious HIMSS Level 6 Health care IT maturity model certification in 2013 which is a rare maturity level attained in Asia Pacific Arvind has lead the Apollo team to be recognized with the HiMSS- Elsevier award (2013 , 2016, 2018) for outstanding use of IT in patient care delivery in Asia Pacific. Under his leadership, Apollo Hospitals was awarded the Microsoft Health Innovation award in 2016 for the use of effective big data analytics using Microsoft solution in Infection control surveillance in health systems.
His experience in the domain of health care IT has spanned geographies across the world. Prior to his current assignment, Arvind was with the Healthcare Practice of Computer Sciences Corporation, in Michigan USA.
Arvind holds the credentials of CHCIO certified by the College of Health Information Executives, USA as a Healthcare CIO. He currently serves as the Secretary of CHiME’s India chapter and is a member of the board of CHiME in India. He has been inducted into the CIO Hall of fame by the prestigious CIO.in magazine. In 2019, he was felicitated by CIO&Leader for Exemplary Leadership , Professional excellence and Community contribution.
Apart from ICT solutions in the Healthcare domain, Arvind has keen interest in IT solutions that aid Quality and Service excellence in service industries.
Arvind lives in Chennai with his family and is a very keen Carnatic music enthusiast.
Dr. Dhaval Shah- Co-founder at API Holdings( PharmEasy) is an MBBS from Rajiv Gandhi government medical college. He did his MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur post that. He worked at McKinsey & Co as a consultant after his MBA.
PharmEasy is trying to solve for affordable and authentic healthcare solutions.
He has been featured in the Forbes 30 under 30 lists as well as the Fortune 40 under 40 lists on multiple occasions.
Mr Atanu Roy is Group CIO at the Biocon Group, India's best known global biopharmaceutical company that is changing patients’ lives in over 120 countries by finding new and affordable ways to treat diabetes, cancer and autoimmune diseases. He has been one of India's most respected pharma sector CIOs for over 10 years driving digital transformation resulting in significant business outcomes and before that spent 14+ years in the consulting space. Earlier, Atanu held leadership positions in Hewlett Packard and Price Waterhouse Coopers, driving business transformation across global Manufacturing companies, innovatively leveraging technology. He is an engineering graduate from IIT Kharagpur and MBA from IIM Calcutta. Atanu is also a certified Yoga instructor and a marathon runner.
A partner at McKinsey’s Gurugram office, Jaidev helps pharmaceutical and medical-device companies grow strategically, strengthen management oversight, and ensure processes comply with regulatory standards.
Working for over 20 years in the pharmaceuticals space has helped Jaidev develop deep knowledge of the complex and highly regulated industry. He has helmed several end-to-end transformations for eminent healthcare companies and has also worked with senior-level executives to improve organization design and culture.
Examples of his recent work include the following:
conducting multiple due-diligence processes in the active-pharmaceutical ingredient industry, assessing target molecules and helping craft production strategy
Gupshup enables better customer engagement through conversational messaging. Gupshup is the leading conversational messaging platform, powering over 6 billion messages per month. Across verticals, thousands of large and small businesses use Gupshup to build conversational experiences across marketing, sales and support.
Mr. Beerud Sheth previously founded and led Elance (now Upwork, a publicly listed company), the pioneer of online freelancing and the gig economy. Before that, he worked in the financial services industry – modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and Citicorp Securities. His graduate research, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, involved developing autonomous learning software agents for personalized news filtering.
He earned an M.S. in computer science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology & a B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, where he was awarded the Institute Silver Medal.
Functional Expertise
Industry Expertise
Career Highlights
Education
Harsh Maggon specialises in public and private M&A and private equity transactions. He has advised on some of the largest and control deals in India, including multiple takeover offers, schemes of arrangement and delisting offers. In addition, Harsh has advised boards of directors and senior management of Indian listed companies on complex governance issues and assisted in developing strategies to deal with potential minority shareholder claims and regulatory action. He has extensive experience in advising private equity funds and foreign strategic investors on complex deals, regulatory issues and concerns that typically arise in Indian deals when negotiating with Indian promoters/sellers.
Harsh also focuses on the firm’s Healthcare and Lifesciences practice and has extensive experience in this space. He routinely advises some of the largest hospital and pharma companies including the Manipal group, J.B. Chemicals and Piramal Pharma.
Nitish Agrawal is a Managing Director at Indium, a healthcare focused investment banking advisory firm. Based in Bengaluru, Nitish has advised on domestic and cross border M&A as well as equity fund raising transactions across all segments of healthcare including large hospital chains, single specialty formats (maternity, IVF, etc), diagnostics, medical devices, and healthcare-tech with a cumulative experience of evaluating over 50+ deals in healthcare.
Nitish has had over 20 years of leadership experience in the past across Allegro Capital, GE Capital & Genpact. He is an engineer from IIT, BHU and holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM Calcutta.
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