Apollo Hospitals signs MoU with IBM to establish a $50 million – $100 million fund for healthcare startups

Apollo Hospitals has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with IBM to invest in healthcare startups. The fund will also help create an onco-diagnostics system. The corpus of the fund will be between $50 million – $100 million. Apollo Hospitals plans to work as an accelerator, which will provide an investment of $5 million at first and then later bolster another $10 million.

Commenting on the fund establishment and the partnership between the two, Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director of Apollo Hospitals said, “We are constantly approached by healthcare startups at multiple levels and to cater to this need, we have created a small fund that supports these startups reach their next level.”

The hospital chain also plans to work with IBM Watson, which will help enable Artificial Intelligence powered care. They have also partnered with other companies in the recent past. It’s not just Apollo who wants to enter the startup space to be the forefront of technology.

Recently, US based VC firm Bessemer Venture partners, reportedly, came out with $40-$50 million to invest in healthtech, financial technology, and other consumer related internet products.

In recent times, Healthcare has become one of the biggest sectors in the country, both in terms of revenue and employment. This industry comprises hospitals, medical devices , clinical trials, mecine tourism, among many others. According to Deloitte India, with increased digital adoption, the Indian healthcare is likely to grow at a pace of 23 percent CAGR to $280 billion in next two years. Which can go upto $372 billion by 2022.

The country is experiencing a surge in the medical tourism industry and the industry is expected to double its size from last year (from $3 billion in 2017 to $6 billion in 2018). While medical tourists arrival have increased more than 50 percent.

The Indian healthcare information technology was pegged at $1 billion in 2016 and was expected to grow 1.5 times by 2020.

Apollo Hospitals