Preventive healthcare market in India to be $100B opportunity by 2022

The preventive healthcare market in India is expected to be a $100 billion industry by 2022, and is witnessing growth at 18% CAGR – much higher than the y-o-y growth in consumer retail spend.

RedSeer Consulting, a homegrown research and advisory firm with focus on consumer internet, investments, and industry practice, including healthcare, released a report on the preventive healthcare market in India. There is an unprecedented rise in health awareness and management of lifestyle among Indians – a 130-million Health Conscious Individuals (HCIs) will be actively taking preventive measures to ensure a healthy living by 2022, the report states.

Technology is playing a key role of equaliser in taking preventive healthcare to second and third wave of demography across geography and class. It is also solving the problem of engagement and milestone achievement that was missing traditionally in taking preventive practice. Say, a fitbit or mi band user is getting motivated to walk a few extra steps today to save the cost of treating obesity a few years down the line.

In the future, preventive healthcare is expected to witness tech disruption before healthcare due to non-criticality of its nature as compared to healthcare that requires a huge trust on part of consumer to shift adoption. The role of government is going to be critical to reverse the investment focus from tertiary to primary healthcare.

The preventive sector revolves around the five key segments of healthy consumption, fitness, health monitoring, rejuvenation, and wellbeing assurance. Healthy consumption that includes health foods & delivery, nutraceuticals, and organic beauty care is expected to cross $30 billion by 2022. Its growth is being driven by rising acceptance of healthy staples but health meal delivery – a relatively new segment is catching up quickly.

Global resource constraints are leading the industry to explore unconventional avenues to meet the ever-growing demand of high-nutrition food. Fitness segment, driven by rise in recreational sports along with increase in fitness retail and sportswear, is expected to be a $32 billion industry by 2022.

The segment is growing at a CAGR of ~27% and is expected to continue the pace and is seeing innovations that offer more engaging experience in fitness and sports activities at a lot more convenience. Health monitoring sector consisting of health electronic wearables, home health monitoring devices, and diagnostics is brimming with high-level activity as newer technologies are being launched periodically and newer players crowd the segment. Growing at a CAGR of 20%, the segment will be $18 billion by 2022.

Alternate medicines and therapies are undergoing revival and format innovations to appeal to the youth with increasing acceptance among HCIs and contributing to the 18% CAGR of the rejuvenation segment. This segment also includes yoga, spa/sauna services and wellness tourism and is expected to grow to $20 billion market by 2022.

Health insurance, telemedicine, physiotherapy and mental healthcare have currently low penetration in the country, but technology is playing a game-changing role in each of these sectors to spill over the benefit to the larger mass – these sectors form the wellbeing assurance segment that is growing at 30% y-o-y and is expected to be $ 6 billion by 2022.