IPO-bound Nephroplus built resilience in India. It’s now using it to win overseas

Dialysis is a tough business, and not because of any serious lack of demand. Over 280,000 patients were undergoing regular dialysis in 2024, a number that’s projected to go up to 520,000 by 2029. Add in less frequent or one-time treatments, and the number of patients who need the procedure every year breaches one million. It is the economics that is the tricky bit. High procurement costs, tricky consumable-stock management, and very low margins—in fact, nowhere on the planet can one run a small dialysis business sustainably. And India, with the lowest dialysis price point in the world, is the toughest market to crack. Which perhaps explains why IPO-bound kidneycare chain Nephroplus’ founder Vikram Vuppala built the kidneycare chain the way he did. It is already India’s—and Asia’s—largest dialysis service provider. And it is expanding, both inside and outside the country’s borders, for which it wants to put the Rs 353 crore it plans to raise from its IPO to good use. In this edition of Make India Competitive Again, The Ken’s Sudeshna Ray explains how testing itself in a market like India, and building expertise in a “full-stack” model, has been key to its success overseas. Read this edition as a newsletter: https://the-ken.com/newsletter/make-india-competitive-again/ipo-bound-nephroplus-built-resilience-in-india-its-now-using-it-to-win-overseas/