Ovum gets Rs 33 crore from Norwest, IL&FS Invest

BENGALURU: Bengaluru-based Neonatal Care & Research Institute (NCRI), which runs Ovum hospitals for pediatric and neonatal care, has raised Rs 33 crore from IL&FS Investment Managers and Norwest Venture Partners. The company is the latest among mother-and-childcare hospital chains to get funding from venture capital and private equity investors in recent months.

The company was launched by four doctor-entrepreneurs in 2011 with a shop-in-shop model by offering neonatal services to several major hospitals in the city. It runs a paediatric and delivery hospital, started two years ago, and an in vitro fertilisation (IVF) centre.

Ovum plans to use the money to expand to three more hospitals in and around Bengaluru in the next 18 months, CEO Dr Adarsh Somashekar said. The company has so far spent little over Rs 13 crore on the two centres from the funds raised as well as through loans.

Ovum had earlier raised funding from primary care clinic chain Nationwide, which is also backed by Norwest.

Ovum offers slightly lower cost packages compared to competitors such as CloudNine and Cradle, which are targeted more at the upper middle-class segments. Cofounder Dr Praveen Venkatagiri said the company will be able to afford the price differential by spending less on ambience and choosing localities where its competitors are not present.

According to Venkatagiri, Ovum is currently on a revenue run rate of Rs 18 crore for the year, which he expects to reach Rs 24 crore in the next eight months.

Norwest, which has made several other healthcare investments like in diagnostics chain Thyrocare, was already familiar with the Ovum team through its investment in Nationwide. Ovum sees about 80 deliveries a month and expects the figure to reach 400 after the new hospitals are functional.