Portea makes its second acquisition in 2016, nabs Health Mantra

Home healthcare company Portea Medical today acquired Health Mantra India Private Limited, the home medical equipment service provider, in an undisclosed cash and stock deal. This comes just three months after the company acquired stake in PSTakeCare, a platform that connects stakeholders of the healthcare ecosystem. As part of the acquisition terms, the entire Health Mantra team will be a part of Portea. With this acquisition, Portea would be strengthening its offerings in geriatric care, orthopedics, respiratory care and sleep medicine.

Started in 2009 by Anoop Kodoli and Ashish Bhutada, Bengaluru-based Health Mantra has a team of 30 biomedical engineers, service staff, physiotherapists, and a service network in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

Meena Ganesh, MD and CEO, Portea, says that with this acquisition, medical equipment, which is an integral part of home healthcare, will be strengthened. She adds that the Health Mantra team has built a solid business, especially in the areas of oncology, orthopedics, sleep disorders, geriatric care and respiratory disorders.

Health Mantra's Ashish says aligning with Portea would provide his company a bigger canvas to expand its operations across product lines and locations. After raising a Series-B fund of $37.5 million from Accel, IFC, Qualcomm Ventures and Ventureast, Portea acquired MedybizPharma in November last year and acquired a majority stake in PSTakeCare in January 2016.

In an effort to expand its offerings, especially across non-communicable diseases, the team at Portea is looking at other investments as well, the company said.

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While 2015 saw the healthtech sector clock 57 deals worth $277 million, this year too has been seeing a growth and investment in the space. This month, Healthenablr raised a funding of $800,000, and ekinecare raised a pre-Series A funding of Rs.2.2 crore.

Data for 2000-2015 from the Department of Industry Policy and Promotion shows FDI investment in hospitals and diagnostic centres totalled $3.21 billion. According to IBEF, the healthcare market in India was worth close to $100 billion as of 2015 and is expected to touch $280 billion by 2020, clocking a CAGR of 22.9 percent. Of the overall market, the healthcare delivery sub-segment accounts for 65 percent.

Home healthcare is fast picking up along with other segments of the healthtech space. Portea, along with competitors like India Home Healthcare, Unique Home Care by Apollo, Healers and Home and Nightingale’s, can create and capture a large market if they get their patient-care model right while scaling up.

The medical equipment market, which Portea now enters into with this acquisition, is predicted to touch $7 billion by this year end.

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