Actis, the pan-emerging markets investor, is to sell its majority shareholding investment in Sterling Hospital, a healthcare provider in Gujarat.
Actis invested in the Indian healthcare chain in 2006. Its goal was to build a high quality regional business providing sophisticated medical services including oncology, neurosurgery and transplant surgery to patients across Gujarat.
Actis is now selling its 82 per cent shareholding to Addlife Investments, a company promoted by Girish Patel, the current chairman of Sterling. Patel will remain as the chairman and continue to build the business and growing its operations in Gujarat and beyond.
Over the period of its investment Actis put in place a professional management team, expanded the footprint of the business from a single site to seven sites across the region, and invested significantly in expanding specialist surgery, including liver and bone marrow transplants.
Actis has made three investments in 2013 in the healthcare industry in China and India.
Actis’s head of Asia JM Trivedi says: “Healthcare is an area of focus for Actis. Sterling epitomises our ability to help build best in class healthcare assets, by bringing in a professional management team and putting in place the appropriate systems and governance.”
Patel says: “Actis has helped Sterling professionalise, accelerate growth and create a pan- Gujarat healthcare platform. I intend to build on this foundation and turn Sterling into a leading healthcare player on a national scale.”
