Dineout founders raise $4.5M for The Medical Travel Company; will target the UK-India corridor

Ankit Mehrotra and Sahil Jain, founders of restaurant discovery and reservation platform Dineout, on Tuesday raised $4.5 million in seed funding for their new venture, The Medical Travel Company.

The funding round was led by Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from Kriscore Capital, and athlete-led investment collective 4CAST, co-founded by international cricketers Ben Stokes, Jofra Archer, and KL Rahul. Angel investors, Swiggy’s Sriharsha Majety, Tracxn’s Abhishek Goyal, Innov8’s Ritesh Malik, and Dr. Vaidya’s Arjun Vaidya, also participated.

Founded in 2024, the UK- and India-based startup aims to streamline the medical tourism industry by connecting UK patients, facing long wait times for elective procedures, with accredited Indian hospitals offering faster, affordable, and high-quality care.

The startup plans to use the funds to expand operations in both countries, enhance its digital patient management system, and strengthen clinical partnerships across India.

“With over 7.7 million people in the UK waiting for elective treatments, access to timely care is now a crisis,” said Co-founder and CEO Sahil Jain. “Our goal is to create healthcare certainty—ensuring continuity of

care from UK doctors to Indian hospitals, and back again.”

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The Medical Travel Company has positioned itself as a “full-stack platform” for medical travel—medical oversight in the UK, treatment from internationally trained doctors at accredited hospitals, and a 12-month post-surgery insurance policy valid in the UK.

The co-founders, who sold Dineout to Swiggy in 2022, said their experience building consumer trust at scale informed their approach to a traditionally fragmented industry.

“Medical tourism is a broken industry. We’re not just fixing it; we’re rebuilding it. What begins in the UK is only the first chapter—our vision is to enable cross-border healthcare access globally,” said co-founder Ankit Mehrotra.

Nexus Venture Partners’ Pratik Poddar said the startup’s “full-stack model” could unlock the immense untapped potential in global medical travel. “India has long been a medical frontier; it’s time that excellence becomes globally accessible,” he said.

The Medical Travel Company eventually plans to extend its services to the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe, where healthcare systems face similar pressures.

Rise of medical tourism, with caveats

India has emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing hubs for medical tourism, a sector that has rebounded sharply since the pandemic. According to the Ministry of Tourism, foreign tourist arrivals for medical purposes jumped from roughly 183,000 in 2020 to an estimated 635,000 in 2023.

According to industry estimates, the medical tourism market was pegged at $7.6–8 billion in 2024, with expectations that it will cross $14 billion by 2029, if current growth trends remain steady. Analysts at ICRA say the segment grew about 33% in 2023 and is now on track to exceed the pre-COVID-19 levels.

The “Heal in India” initiative, launched in 2022 by the Indian government, aims to position the country as a global healthcare destination by promoting accredited hospitals and easing patient travel. A dedicated medical e-visa and attendant visa scheme now allows nationals from over 160 countries to enter India more easily for treatment.

Still, the industry faces several persistent challenges. Aftercare and follow-up post a patient's discharge from the hospital remain weak links, as do regulatory and accreditation inconsistencies across facilities.

While top-tier hospitals are internationally certified, smaller clinics may not meet uniform quality standards. Competition is intensifying from countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Turkey, and the UAE, which market themselves as “medical wellness” destinations combining surgery with spa-style recovery.