ISN Exclusive: ex-Ola executive Varun Dubey starts up a hospital chain, in talks to raise seed funding

Former chief marketing officer (CMO) at Ola, Varun Dubey, has turned a founder and started up his own company that will run a chain of hospitals, sources in the know told IndianStartupNews (ISN).

The company, registered as Superhealth Hospitals Pvt Ltd in Bengaluru, is in talks to raise Rs 12-13 crore in funding from Sparrow Capital, a leading early-stage venture capital (VC) arm, the sources added.

Dubey is counting on his experience from Practo, a healthcare startup, and his stint as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at Apollo Hospitals, to scale his new business of running hospitals. The idea is to open up a chain of small hospitals across cities with minimal capital outgo and pull in as many patients as possible.

“Digging into why healthcare sucks so much and obsessing over how to fix it for patients and doctors because it seems like both are stuck in this horrible system,” Dubey said on his LinkedIn under the tag “Stealth Mode.”

Details around his new venture and funding for the same have not been reported previously.

Dubey chose not to reply to ISN’s emails.

The Practo mafia: Dubey is being supported by Dr. Alexander Kuruvilla, chief strategy officer at Practo and Manoj Kumar Gangasandra, also a former Practo executive who now says he is “making healthcare better” on LinkedIn, where he is listed under a “Stealth Startup”.

Dubey has been a sharp operator, having worked at Qualcomm, Nvidia and more during his career spanning over a decade. With the move, Dubey joins other executives who are making similar moves.

Nirmal NR, former head of Zoomcar India, is “building an AI-assisted primary care for smaall-town India, starting with Kerala.” Nirmal NR’s company is named Preventify.

With increasing competition, it will be interesting to have a ringside view of what is happening across hospital spaces and which company emerges as the winner, especially as the space is full of large players.