Manipal Health Enterprises IPO: Business Overview, Objects of Issue & Financials from the DRHP

Manipal Health Enterprises has filed its Draft Red Herring Prospectus with SEBI — the price band and offer dates aren’t out yet, but the DRHP already lays out an ₹8,000 crore fresh issue, a business that’s now India’s widest-reaching private hospital network by footprint, and a debt-funded acquisition it wants IPO money to help pay down.

*Pro forma, giving effect to the Sahyadri Hospitals acquisition. Price band and offer dates are yet to be determined — this is a Draft Red Herring Prospectus, filed ahead of SEBI review, not a live offer.

Because this is a draft filing, several figures that would normally anchor a report like this — price band, lot size, exact offer dates — simply don’t exist yet. What follows is built entirely from what the company has disclosed in the DRHP itself.

The two named uses account for roughly ₹5,952 crore of the proposed ₹8,000 crore raise — nearly three-quarters of it — going toward debt tied to Manipal Hospitals Private Limited (MHPL), the company’s key operating subsidiary, and toward buying out the remaining minority stake in a hospital chain it acquired in stages just months before filing.

Manipal Health Enterprises runs a pan-India network of multispecialty hospitals. As of September 30, 2025, that’s 38 hospitals with 10,761 licensed beds across 14 states and union territories — and on a pro forma basis, giving effect to the Sahyadri acquisition, 48 hospitals and 12,367 beds. By CRISIL’s count, that makes it the widest-reaching private hospital chain in India by footprint, the largest by pan-India bed capacity, and the second-largest by number of hospitals. A 49th hospital came online in Bengaluru in November 2025, taking pro forma bed capacity to 12,631 by the end of December 2025.

The company holds a leadership position in three metros at once — Bengaluru, Kolkata and Pune — which together account for roughly 5,012 beds on a pro forma basis. Its flagship Manipal Hospital on Old Airport Road, Bengaluru has been rated the city’s #1 hospital for 20 consecutive years (2005–2025) in The Week–Hansa Research survey, and the group was named Healthcare Company of the Year (2023) by VCCircle and Best Hospital Chain – National (2022) by The Economic Times.

The three biggest regional clusters, on a pro forma basis: Karnataka (6,040 beds), Maharashtra & Goa (2,188 beds), and an Eastern India cluster spanning West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand and Sikkim (2,887 beds). The complex-care focus shows up in the revenue mix too — Cardiac, Oncology, Neurosciences, Gastro, Orthopedics and Renal care (the “CONGO-R” specialties) together made up 64.08% of gross inpatient revenue in the six months to September 2025, up steadily from 60.25% in FY2023.

Through subsidiary MHPL, the company acquired Sahyadri Hospitals — 10 hospitals and 1,606 licensed beds across Pune, Nashik, Ahilya Nagar and Karad in Western India — in stages starting October 2025. The DRHP proposes to fund the final tranche, and pay down the debt taken on for the first two, using IPO proceeds.

*Six months ended 30 September 2025; not annualised. EPS restated for a 2:1 bonus issue and sub-division of face value from ₹10 to ₹2 during the relevant periods.

Revenue grew at a 30.50% CAGR between FY2023 and FY2025, but profit grew faster still — a 61.60% CAGR over the same stretch, taking the profit margin from roughly 8.6% of revenue to over 13%. Working capital is a genuine strength here: the company ran a negative working capital cycle of 16 days in FY2025 (12 days in H1 FY2026), meaning it collects cash faster than it pays out, unusual for a capital-intensive hospital business.

Since there’s no price band yet, there’s no P/E to quote for Manipal — the one number that will matter most once pricing is announced. What can be said now: the DRHP names Apollo Hospitals as its sole listed peer, and the disclosed industry peer P/E range runs from 73.23x to 87.63x, averaging 80.33x. On return on net worth, Manipal’s 18.16% in FY2025 (a three-year weighted average of 16.11%) already runs slightly ahead of Apollo’s 17.61% — a reasonable starting point for investors once the price band lands, but not a substitute for it.

Manipal Health Enterprises is still at the DRHP stage, so anchor bidding hasn’t happened yet. The draft filing marks the Anchor Investor Bid/Offer date as “[●]” — to be finalised once the RHP is filed and the price band is announced. As with any mainboard issue, up to 60% of the QIB Portion may ultimately be reserved for Anchor Investors under SEBI ICDR rules, but there’s no date, price or allocation to report yet. We’ll fill in this section once that information is public.