PB Health, the healthcare venture incubated by Policybazaar parent PB Fintech, is looking to raise Rs 1,500–1,600 crore in a fresh funding round from a mix of new and existing private equity investors, co-founder and vice chairman Alok Bansal told Financial Express.
The capital will be deployed largely towards hospital build-out and construction as the company accelerates its push to create an integrated care network.
The proposed round would mark PB Health’s second major fundraise, coming roughly a year after its $218 million (Rs 1,850 crore) seed round led by General Catalyst, with participation from Faering Capital, Bay Capital, Think Investments, Avataar, and Select Group. Following that round, PB Fintech held a 25.53% stake in the venture, according to Tracxn.
Structural Misalignment
Founded in January 2025, PB Health is attempting to address what Bansal describes as a structural misalignment in India’s healthcare system. “If I am a consumer, I don’t want to go to hospital. The payer, which is the insurance company, also doesn’t want me to go to hospital. With the way things are structured, it’s only the hospital that wants me in hospital,” he said.
Current insurance products, he argued, offer wide hospital networks but limited coverage beyond hospitalisation, making the experience cumbersome for patients, while insurers grapple with fraud, over-treatment, and inefficiencies at the provider level.
PB Health’s model seeks to align incentives by operating as a healthcare service layer spanning preventive care, OPD, chronic disease management, daycare, home care, and pre- and post-operative follow-ups, with hospitalisation positioned as a last resort.
Regional Expansion
The company has begun building out its footprint. Its first facility — a 250-bed hospital in Noida acquired around five months ago — is expected to launch soon. A 100-bed hospital in Gurgaon is set to go live within four weeks. A third Gurgaon facility with 240 beds is 12–15 months away, while a land parcel in Faridabad has been secured for a 150-bed hospital, with construction expected to take 2–3 years.
PB Health plans to scale to 6–7 hospitals across Delhi-NCR, totalling 1,200–1,300 beds, with facilities within a 20–25 km radius of patients. “Our sweet spot is 150–250 beds per facility. Wherever there is an opportunity to acquire and transition to our protocol, we are doing that. Otherwise, we are looking at long-term leases,” Bansal said. Industry-wide build-out costs, he added, are roughly Rs 1.2–1.3 crore per bed, excluding land.
Over time, the company intends to partner with insurers to create products tailored to its network, offering comprehensive coverage — including OPD, preventive care, daycare, chronic disease management, and pre- and post-operative services — in exchange for a narrower hospital network. PB Health aims to price services at 0.8–0.9 times the rates of top-tier chains such as Apollo, Max, and Fortis.
The approach echoes elements of vertically integrated models. In India, Narayana Health has moved in this direction with the launch of Narayana One Health in 2024. Globally, players such as Kaiser Permanente and Bupa Sanitas combine insurance and hospital networks.
Bansal, however, said PB Health does not intend to align with a single insurer, arguing that its distribution strength through Policybazaar allows it to remain insurer-agnostic. “Our customers should have the flexibility of choosing,” he said.
The shift from platform to asset-heavy healthcare delivery is gaining traction. Startups such as Even Healthcare now operate hospitals in Bengaluru and plan further expansion. SuperHealth, backed by MS Dhoni’s family office, has launched a hospital with a subscription-led model, while Pristyn Care is also moving towards owning hospital infrastructure, after starting as a surgical aggregator.
India’s private healthcare market remains fragmented, with an estimated 95% of care delivered through independent hospitals and regional operators. Apollo Hospitals, for instance, acquired Nova Specialty Hospitals in 2015 and rebranded it as Apollo Spectra for short-stay surgical care, but struggled to differentiate as competing hospitals offered similar infrastructure. Columbia Asia, which entered India with a small-format model, gradually shifted towards larger, more capital-intensive facilities.
PB Health is now looking beyond NCR. The company plans to enter at least one more city within six to 12 months, with Tier-2 markets such as Jaipur, Indore, or Nagpur under consideration. “The long-term vision is an operate-and-manage model. We will own a core set of hospitals first, then offer to run others’ facilities, similar to the Taj or Marriott model in hospitality,” Bansal said.