[100 Emerging Women Leaders] Meet the woman entrepreneur championing preventive healthcare

Tanya Khubchandani Vatsa understood the importance of wellness and a preventive healthcare system while working in New York. However, she noticed that India’s healthcare landscape is not the same.

“In many countries, the emphasis is placed on wellness visits and preventive care, involving routine wellness check-ups and therapies like IV treatments into daily life. In contrast, India's healthcare system often prioritises reactive interventions, addressing health issues only after someone falls ill. The concept of preventive healthcare is still relatively unfamiliar in India,” she tells HerStory.

Hailing from a family of doctors, Tanya always wanted to study medicine, and venturing into a similar space almost felt natural for her. After ample research, she founded Elixir Wellness in 2022. 

The Mumbai-based wellness centre offers preventive care, skin care, and anti-ageing solutions, among others, to improve a person’s general quality of life. 

Offering wellness

Elixir Wellness first started with IV infusion services before expanding to offer three more major services—wellness lab, aesthetic lab, and anti-ageing lab.

Its wellness services include physiotherapy and pain management, lymphatic drainage, chiropractic adjustments, cryotherapy, and more. Its aesthetic lab offers body contour fillers and laser facials, among others. It plans to launch hair transplant treatment soon.

The bootstrapped startup also provides hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which involves breathing pure oxygen in a pressurised chamber, allowing higher levels of oxygen to be absorbed by the body’s tissues. 

Tanya explains that increased oxygen supply aids in tissue repair, collagen production, and the overall healing process—making it an effective treatment for various skin concerns.

For its anti-ageing services, Elixir Wellness offers a telomere testing service that allows one to gain information about their tissue age, which can play a crucial role in understanding their body’s ageing process.

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Tanya explains that telomeres—protective caps at the ends of chromosomes—shorten as tissues divide, leading to ageing and age-related diseases. The telomerase enzyme maintains and lengthens telomeres, potentially delaying ageing. 

“By measuring the length of one telomeres, our expert team can provide a snapshot of their biological age, allowing them to make informed decisions about their lifestyle and health management strategies,” Tanya explains.

In fact, the hyperbaric oxygen treatment stimulates telomerase production by increasing oxygen availability, which helps in cell repair, reduces oxidative stress, and maintains telomere length.

Meanwhile, the startup’s IV therapy service includes treatments for headaches, vitamin and mineral infusions, hydration, and more.

Elixir Wellness’ treatments start from Rs 1,000 and can go up to Rs 35,000. It has conducted treatments for nearly 35,000 clients, of which 20,000 went for IV treatments. Of the rest 15,000 treatments, 60% went for skin and aesthetics, 15% for fat loss, 15% for wellness and recovery, and 10% for anti-ageing.

The startup has 27 centres across Delhi, Bengaluru, and Mumbai. It follows a franchise model for its Delhi and Bengaluru centres.

The beginning

While Tanya wanted to pursue medicine, her parents’ wanted otherwise. Eventually, she pursued a BA in psychology and economics from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Although she could not become a doctor, she wanted to have a career in the medical field. She earned a master’s in public health from Columbia University and worked at Weill Cornell Medical College as the director of business. 

She also managed the outpatient centre and focused on preventive healthcare at Montefiore Medical Center for two years. 

After returning to India in 2014, she started working at Khubchandani Healthcare, the family hospital started by her father Dr Prakash Khubchandani, as the director of strategy and business development and oversaw HCG ICS Khubchandani Cancer Center and ICS Khubchandani Dialysis Center.

Throughout this journey, one thing remained constant for Tanya—a significant lack of awareness about preventive healthcare and wellness treatments among people, which led her to start Elixir Wellness.

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Challenges

In India, people do not visit doctors before falling sick, Tanya says, adding, “Breaking this mindset was a challenging task, as people questioned the need for such things.”

However, these treatments are getting traction among Indians now, but there’s a catch. “Many parlours and small centres perform these IV therapies and other treatments in an irregular manner, which can be dangerous,” Tanya says.

She explains that one bad instance can bring a bad reputation to the treatment and other centres as well.

Tanya knows it’s no easy task to be a woman in the field of business. She recalls instances where she had to bring her father to the negotiating table as she believes people talk to women and men differently. 

As a female entrepreneur, Tanya says she brings warmth and femininity to her role, but it can be challenging to set clear boundaries.

“Such challenges will come and go, but one has to keep navigating their way through them,” she adds.