How do organisations like Redcliffe Labs look at the opportunities emerging in healthcare? How do you maintain quality as you scale up?
These are some of the best times for healthcare. Its prominence has never been greater. Earlier, we thought about healthcare only when illness affected us or our families. COVID provided a tailwind to diagnostics, but that prominence was getting lost over the last two to three years.
Over the last year, we have seen a mindset shift. People are becoming more aspirational and want to plan ahead rather than address health issues later.
India is also grappling with an epidemic of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). There is a chronic patient in almost every family, whether diabetic, prediabetic, or dealing with cardiovascular, cancer, or lipid-related issues. A recent ICMR study said that 80 percent of Indians are dyslipidemic, which is an early signal of poor metabolic health.
Lifestyle is a major contributor. Eating habits have shifted from home food towards outside food, while quick commerce and ecommerce are changing consumption patterns. Rising incomes and prosperity are also contributing to what I would call a poor health syndrome.
This is the problem we wanted to address when we started Redcliffe Labs. We did not want to focus only on illness because acute and terminal illnesses, surgeries, and hospital-based diagnostics are already relatively well served in India. Healthcare is also affordable and accessible.
We wanted to shift the conversation from illness care to healthcare. If we do not, the epidemic will become so visible that we may not have enough beds to treat people. Around 500 million Indians are either chronic or nearchronic, although that figure is understated because there is no single uniform study assessing the risk.
Our simple endeavour is to enable people to test periodically and preventively. Our business strategy is built around four As: affordability, accessibility, awareness and actionability.
Affordability is critical. If tests remain expensive, people will wait until a problem arises. As a direct-to-consumer player, we can pass on the margin benefit from not having channel costs and from operating at volume. Today, we are able to offer tests at almost 40–50 per cent lower prices than traditional players.
The second is accessibility. People do not want to visit a centre at six or seven in the morning for a fasting test and stand in a queue. They want convenience and doorstep services. Technology has enabled us to operate at scale. Home collections account for close to 60 per cent of what we do, compared with 10–20 per cent for traditional players. We have more than 1,200 phlebotomists covering around 3,000 pincodes across India.
The third is awareness. Even educated consumers often do not know which tests they should take, why they should take them or what the results mean. We have invested in awareness from day one. More than 20 million people visit our website organically for content explained in simple, vernacular language.
The fourth, and one that diagnostic companies rarely discuss, is actionability. A diagnostic company’s relationship with a consumer often ends when the report is delivered. For us, that is the starting point.
A report should provide more than highlighted parameters. Individual parameters cannot tell you whether you are healthy, ill, or borderline; they need to be assessed together and in the context of the appropriate panel. We believe someone should help consumers understand their reports and create a personalised plan covering lifestyle, diet, movement, and sleep.
This approach has helped us scale rapidly. In five years, we have crossed Rs 500 crore in ARR as of August’26 and ~1.3 crore people. We conduct about 100,000 tests a day. Healthcare is also moving towards preventive and continuous care. Consumers are increasingly tracking longitudinal data on apps and looking at how their markers change over time. Our app and reports show these trends and explain what the consumer should do next. We also offer consultation and expert guidance, including diet plans, free of cost.
Another trend is the movement beyond metros and tier-1 cities. Preventive testing is increasingly reaching tier-2 and smaller cities. We are seeing growth rates of around 18–20 per cent in tier-2 and above, compared with an overall market growth of around 12–13 per cent.
What is the role of health tech in a diagnostic company like Redcliffe Labs?
AI has made access to health information easier for the common consumer. But health tech needs medical guardrails. We use AI within medical guardrails so that the output is vetted and does not hallucinate.
We call this Health AI Companion. Consumers can ask questions and receive responses based on our database, within medical guardrails vetted by doctors. We have doctors with expertise in AI who have helped build our LLM models, bringing medical and technology expertise together.
Can this be personalised for each patient?
Yes, it is personalised. Earlier health-tech applications were largely rule-based.
Today, AIbased solutions consume large amounts of data and use generative AI to produce explanations and recommendations.
But healthcare is sensitive. AI could incorrectly tell someone they are diabetic and even recommend medication. That is where the risk lies. A company like us, which is a medical company but technology-led, can build guardrails to prevent such outcomes.
It is also important that the system can say it cannot provide an answer rather than generate a wrong one. That is where healthcare-focused AI has an advantage over a general AI model providing health information directly to consumers.
What are the expansion plans for FY2027?
We ended FY26 at ~₹420 crore in net revenue (standalone diagnostics) and anticipate touching close to Rs 600 crore in FY27. We are growing at more than 30 per cent organically this year, compared with industry growth of around 12–14 per cent. Our CAGR over the last four years has been 40 per cent.
Beyond geographic expansion, we are going deeper into capabilities. Integrated diagnostics is a major opportunity. Pathology players have built large networks but have not necessarily built radiology alongside them. Consumers do not want to visit multiple locations when a doctor prescribes both scans and blood tests.
We are therefore building integrated healthcare infrastructure. We have partnered with and acquired businesses in Rajasthan, Bengaluru and Pune, retaining key professionals, including radiologists. These partnerships allow us to add radiology capabilities alongside our existing strength in home collection and pathology.
We anticipate another 10 per cent growth from inorganic expansion this year, thus taking us to ₹600 crore (in addition to the organic growth anticipated in FY27).
When do you plan to IPO, as the next step in your scaleup journey?
We measure scale through the people we serve and the number of tests we conduct. An IPO is also a financial milestone for our investors, who backed us at an early stage. We believe the company can grow at 26–30 per cent over the next three years. By FY30, we expect the topline to reach Rs 1,200 crore-plus. We believe that would be an appropriate scale for becoming a publicly traded company, provided there are no major macroeconomic changes. With the current landscape, we believe FY30 is a good time to go public.
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