Former Fortis boss Bali to manage TPG Growth's Asia health care funds

Vishal Bali has experience of two and a half decades in the global health care business

Vishal Bali, former group chief executive at Fortis Healthcare, is joining TPG Growth, one of the world's largest private equity (PE) funds, as Asia head for health care. Bali confirmed his appointment at TPG to Business Standard. According to sources close to the development, Bali will be responsible for buying, managing and growing health care assets in the region. He is also close to launching an entrepreneurial venture, sources said.

TPG Growth is the growth equity investment platform of TPG, a global private investment firm. While TPG Growth has assets of $3.5 billion under management, parent TPG has $55.3 billion. TPG, with a major focus on health care, was the prominent investor in health care giant Parkway in Singapore and owns Healthscope in Australia along with PE fund Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

Under his agreement with Fortis, Bali was supposed to leave the company by the end of March. Since 2010, Bali, based in Singapore, had been involved with the international expansion of Fortis in 10 countries of the Asia-Pacific.

Bali has experience of two and a half decades in the global health care business, of which he spent 19 years at the Wockhardt Hospitals Group, where he rose to become the chief executive from a management trainee as the the company grew to become India's third largest hospital chain. He joined Fortis in 2009, after some hospitals of Wockhardt were merged with Fortis'.

A management graduate from University of Bombay (now University of Mumbai), Bali has completed an advanced programme in hospital management from Boston. He has been a member of the strategic initiatives group of the US Joint Commission International and the global agenda healthcare council of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

TPG Growth, an active investor in the Indian health care market, had earlier invested Rs 145 crore in Sutures India, a Bangalore-based manufacturer of medical consumables. The fund started investing in India in 2009. Its other investments in the country are in Flexituff, AGS Transact and Greenko.

India's private health care sector attracted a little more than $1.2 billion in funding in 2012 and 2013.