Mahindra Partners today announced an investment of Rs 206.5 crore in New Delhi based leading eye hospital network Centre for Sight (CFS). As part of this transaction, the promoters have further invested Rs 20 crore, while Matrix Partners India fully exited its stake in Centre for Sight. A total of Rs 226.5 crore has been invested, in a mix of primary and secondary investment, by Mahindra Partners and the promoters.

This is the second healthcare investment by Mahindra partners after Medwell Ventures which operates a home healthcare chain. The next course of action with the investment will be 3-6 eye centre acquisitions in the next 4-6 months.  

Parag Shah, Managing Partner at Mahindra Partners said, “We are excited to partner with the Centre for Sight as it enters its next phase of growth. It is a leader in ophthalmology in India and we want to be a part of its evolution and growth into the dominant Indian eye care brand.”

Parag also added that Centre for Sight also fits into the larger healthcare strategy which is focused on the delivery side with a bias towards a single specialty.

Prof. (Dr.) Mahipal S Sachdev, CMD of CFS said, “Our association with Mahindra Partners will help us sustain the scorching pace of growth we have set out for ourselves, enabling us to open new centers in our existing territories as well as in areas lacking quality eye-care and also to drive growth through strategic acquisitions of existing practices.

CFS Education is a learning and development initiative by Centre for Sight, which aims to provide high-quality, evidence-based and experience-driven ophthalmic education to various cadres of ophthalmologists - postgraduate students, fellows in training, practicing ophthalmologists and subspecialists.

Dr. Mahipal Sachdev stressed on the lack of ophthalmologists in the county stating the ratio of 1:25000 for ophthalmologist per people. The situation in the rural areas in even worse, where one ophthalmologist is present for every 2,19,000 people. He also added that India has the largest cataract load in the world.

Dr. Mahipal Sachdev also focused on the part that CFS Education provides skill training in all parameters of eye care, along with short 1-month courses of video learning where candidates and learn and implement in their future actions which can ease a load of cataract operations on the ophthalmologists.