Medicover’s India arm aiming for 2026 IPO to unlock value in Swedish giant’s fastest-growing market

Hari Krishna

Medicover Hospitals India, the local arm of the Stockholm-listed healthcare conglomerate Medicover AB, is gearing up for a public listing in a year’s time, aiming to tap into the country’s booming capital markets after a decade of aggressive, under-the-radar expansion.

The move comes as the hospital chain, which opens its 25th hospital by the end of the month, consolidates rapid growth that has seen it deploy approximately Rs 2,000 crore ($238 million) over the last seven years to build a 6,000-bed capacity network.

"We are the only large chain left to be listed," said Medicover Hospitals India executive director Hari Krishna told Moneycontrol in an interview, signalling the company is preparing to hire bankers for an IPO in late 2026 or 2027.

The Swedish connection

While Indian healthcare has long been dominated by homegrown hospital chains like Apollo and Max, Medicover represents a rare European foray into the complex Indian market.

Parent Medicover AB is a heavyweight in Central and Eastern Europe — operating in Germany, Poland and Romania — and is listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange.

Currently, the Indian operations contribute roughly 10-11 percent to the Swedish group's global revenue but punch significantly above their weight in volume, driving a substantial portion of patient footfall.

With a projected revenue of Rs 2,150–2,200 crore ($255–261 million) for FY26, the Indian entity has become a critical growth engine for the group.

India stands out as Medicover AB's fastest-growing market with its high-teens revenue growth outpacing the group's 16.7 percent organic rate in 2024, fuelled by rapid hospital expansion. Investors and hospital groups are eyeing India despite high valuations. Valuations are high because they encapsulate future earnings, say industry experts. Matured economies which Medicover operates are stagnant, as GDP and population growth remain flat, say industry experts.

The 'distressed asset' playbook

Medicover’s ascent from a single hospital in 2015 to a 24-facility network today has been fuelled by a contrarian strategy - buying broken assets. Krishna said that the company has not acquired a single profitable hospital in the last decade. Instead, it targets "sick" units — distressed hospitals often owned by doctor groups unable to manage cash flows or technology.

"We took them as distress transactions and turned them around," Krishna said, citing examples in Visakhapatnam, Kakinada and Aurangabad, where local promoters faced insolvency or operational collapse.

Eight of the hospitals were acquired as bleeding assets and stabilised within years. This strategy allows Medicover to keep capital costs lower than competitors who focus on greenfield projects in expensive metros.

The digital factory

To make low-cost assets work, Medicover has implemented a "factory-style" efficiency model underpinned by a 100 percent paperless system, a rarity in Indian healthcare.

By digitising the entire supply chain (managing 35,000 stock keeping units) and clinical workflows, the hospital has slashed administrative friction.

The most critical metric, Krishna said is discharge time. "Before implementing EMR (electronic medical record), our discharge turnaround time was close to 11 hours. Now, we are the lowest in the country... roughly 2.5 to 3 hours," Krishna said.

It effectively expands capacity without new construction; a 200-bed hospital can operate at the throughput of a 350-bed facility simply by turning beds over faster.

Focus on consolidation

With its 25th facility, the "tallest hospital" in Hyderabad, set to get operational in a week's time, Medicover is now entering a "consolidation phase". The focus is shifting from aggressive expansion to sweating existing assets, aiming to boost occupancy from the current 45 percent to over 60 percent.

"If we mature even 10 percent more, our EBITDA margins will significantly improve," said Krishna, who expects margins to climb from 20 percent (for mature hospitals) to 25 percent.

As the company prepares for its IPO, it carries debt of approximately Rs 1,100 crore, largely funded by its Swedish parent to avoid early equity dilution —a balance sheet structure it aims to optimise before hitting the public markets.