Narayana Health aims 10% Group revenue growth in FY26

Business Standard

21 hours ago

Bengaluru-heaquartered hospital chain Narayana Health aims to grow its domestic revenue by 10 per cent in the fiscal year 2026, driven by industry benchmarks, a senior company official said.
Managing director and CEO Emmanuel Rupert told Business Standard said, 'Last fiscal we did about Rs 4,349 crore in India revenue and we want to grow at a rate at which the healthcare industry is growing at over 10 per cent. We look to be on the same momentum and revenue,'
Sandhya J, chief financial officer at Devi Shetty's Narayana Health, said the company plans to scale up its Aditi and Arya health insurance schemes in Karnataka and West Bengal.'The entire healthcare ecosystem is failing in trust. We are on the path to solve trust deficit and episodic interference of fund transfer. On the back of this, we aim to double down our insurance scheme and build a strong customer base in Bengaluru, Shivamogga, Mysore and Kolkata.'
Commenting on efforts to improve profit after tax (PAT), which declined 2.3 per cent to Rs 196 crore in Q1 due to increased investments in integrated care and other financial costs, Sandhya noted that PAT optimisation will improve as the India business grows. She added that some clinics have started breaking even, leading to a reduction in losses from the health insurance schemes.
'Over a period of time, we will be able to keep the losses in check and expand margins in the domestic business. PAT should improve. Finance cost will continue to increase due to the Rs 3000 crore project to add 2,000 beds across India over the next three years. The integrated care dilution will continue over the next year but hope to maintain a decent level of cash burn.'
Further, she added that a large part of the fund will come through bank borrowings and Non-Convertible Debentures (NCDs) as and when needed. So far, Rs 800 crore has been raised for projects already signed up.
However, the CFO noted that about RS 1,500 to Rs 2,000 crore loan might be raised in this fiscal, depending on upcoming project developments. 'We are exploring opportunities to expand, some might be inorganic ones as well. Borrowings will be linked to construction progress of our current projects.'
During the quarter, revenue from international patients declined, primarily due to reduced patient footfall from Bangladesh. Narayana indicated that this trend is expected to continue, given the ongoing geopolitical tensions.
'The goal is to keep focusing on domestic growth and see how well we can push the numbers. Eventually, in the next two to three years, we believe that revenue contribution from Bangladesh will go down to zero.Not to miss, the country is building its own healthcare infrastructure.'
Looking ahead, Narayana expects its integrated care business to account for a larger share of overall revenue. At present, cardiac sciences and oncology contribute approximately 33 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively.
On Tuesday, the Clinical Research team and Medha AI developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model that predicts left ventricular ejection fraction from ECG images, enabling early heart failure detection and improved diagnostic access.
'All along we have waited for the Western countries to develop these technologies. Today we are developing this because this country is blessed with phenomenally skilled, passionate software engineers, AI experts. This is our strength. We have made massive investment in building the digital platform, which is far ahead of all the other hospitals. With the great combination of a digital platform with the AI tool, healthcare will never be the same,' said Devi Prasad Shetty, chairman and founder of Narayana Health, at a media briefing.
The Bengaluru-headquartered private multispeciality hospital chain said that trained on over 100,000 ECG images paired with echocardiogram reports, the model showed strong predictive performance. With external validation across 14 tertiary centers and over 57,000 patients, it identified 97 per cent of individuals with severely reduced EF (≤35 per cent).