Healthcare in India-Areas of Opportunity

Chitra Ramakrishnan

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Health care can be segmented into products and services.

Form the product perspective, health care has 5 broad areas of opportunities:

• Medical infrastructure which needs an investment of US $77.9 billion
• Medical equipment industry which is worth US $2.17 billion and is growing at the rate of 15% per year
• Medical textiles industry projected to reach US $753 million by 2012
• Research and outsourcing – clinical trials has the potential to become a US$1 billion industry by 2010 and health services outsourcing will be worth US $7.4 billion by 2012
• Pharmaceuticals industry – according to the Tata Strategic Management Group, Indian API export value will increase to US $ 12.75 billion in 2012 Ref [1][3].

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Looking at Health care from the services perspective,as the wellness industry, there are seven categories- Allopathy, alternative therapies, beauty counselling, fitness/slimming, nutrition and rejuvenation. This segmentation seems to complement the products approach and takes into account all the surrounding areas into which healthcare spills over.

If products approach is the first stage of requirements, the services approach will form the next stage of development in health care. Rejuvenation and beauty services have a huge untapped market which is expected to grow as much as 30 %, while fitness is expected to grow by more than 25 per cent.

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