Canadian fund OTPP to buy majority stake in Sahyadri Hospitals

"We are pleased to acquire a majority stake in Sahyadri Hospitals, which is our first control private equity buyout in India, and our fourth major investment in the country over the last 12 months.

"We believe we can leverage our significant global experience in the healthcare sector to help scale the company into a national healthcare provider in the coming years," said Raju Ruparelia, Senior Managing Director, Private Capital, Asia-Pacific at Ontario Teachers'.

This is OTPP's first private equity buyout in India, after which existing stakeholders Everstone Group, along with key management and founders will retain minority holdings in the business.

OTPP is the administrator of Canada's largest single-profession pension plan, with $189 billion in net assets as of December 31, 2021.

The sell-out process had been going on for some time, and it entered the last phase after Max Healthcare Institute and OTPP emerged as the frontrunners in May, ET reported.

Though the deal size is not disclosed, the deal has valued the hospital chain, owned by private equity fund Everstone Capital, at Rs 2,500 crore - Rs 2,700 crore, ET reported citing people aware of the matter.

Sahyadri has eight hospitals with 900 operating beds and 300 critical-care beds and plans to grow its capacity by 500 beds in the next five years. It has 2,000 clinicians along with 2,600 supporting staff across its network of hospitals, said the ET report.

Its facilities are concentrated around the city of Pune, which is the second largest city in Maharashtra by population.