Lightrock India has invested $15 million in Sukoon Healthcare, acquiring a majority stake in the Gurgaon-based psychiatric inpatient unit. Sukoon claimed that this has been the largest investment in the Indian mental healthcare space. 

With this deal, Saleem Asaria, partner at Lightrock India will take on the role of executive chairman at Sukoon India. Vidit Bahri and Kanishk Gupta, founders of Sukoon Healthcare will continue holding senior leadership roles.

Sukoon plans to scale up its business across multiple locations in India and expand its specialist services with this fresh capital.

Talking about this investment, Bahri and Gupta, commented, “We are excited to be working with Lightrock India and Saleem to build on our vision. We have always believed in putting our patient care and experience at the center of our protocols and have achieved recognition for the leading services we provide in Delhi. We are currently expanding our services to Bengaluru and Mumbai as the first step of a pan-India programme of scale.”

Addressing the decision to invest in Sukoon Healthcare, Asaria said, “As India grows to become a large economy built on the strength of its human capital, we believe that behavioural health is an important and pivotal sector to address towards building a large and healthy society. Sukoon, together with the existing ecosystem, capital and specialist expertise, both national and global, can help create one of the leading mental health systems in the world. This investment is a first step towards realising our vision to build India’s first and largest therapeutic behavioural health platform.”

According to an Indian Express report, nearly 200 million Indians suffer from mental health issues. However, the majority of them are unable to get proper treatment due to the shortage of care-providing specialists.

Sukoon Healthcare aims to bridge this gap by partnering with experienced psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, counsellors and vocational therapists in India.

Additionally, the start-up has built a hospital environment to treat patients and claims to treat more than 11,000 patients in the last year.