Practo | Corporate Development · Clinikk

Clinikk: what we would buy, what we would take on, and the one risk to settle first.

Rebuilt on the company MIS and the assets-and-liabilities schedule Clinikk shared this week. Every number reconciles to one of those two tabs or to a listing we read ourselves, and is labelled with its source.

What it is

A Bengaluru payvider, sub-scale but real12 GP Health Hubs, a 10,000-life insurance book on a corporate agent licence, its own clinic software and ~90,000 patient records. ₹9.24 Cr FY27E revenue, ₹1.58 Cr FY27E burn.

What we take on

₹2.13 Cr of net liabilities, and a deferred wage billAssets ₹1.18 Cr against ₹3.31 Cr of payable liabilities. ₹1.92 Cr of deferred expenses — future founder salaries — sit outside burn and land mostly in the eight months we would fund.

My position

Yes, priced on what existsValue clinics, FOCO, software at build cost and the licence. Insurance EBITDA projection at zero. Settle first whether we want Practo-branded clinics competing with the hospitals and doctors who pay to be on our marketplace.

01
What this business is
Four assets. Two produce revenue, two carry assigned value only.
AssetWhat exists today FY27E revenue, ₹ CrEconomics
Retail clinicsCOCO + FOCO 12 Health Hubs in Bengaluru. 150,620 walk-ins since Jan 2023, 57% non-member. 4.87 Google rating on 6,861 reviews. 2.36 +21.6% COCO: 80% gross margin, but hub fixed cost is 134% of revenue; ₹1.5 to 1.7 Cr lost a year, three years running. FOCO: ₹0.23 to 0.67 Cr, EBITDA positive, franchisee funds capex and ramp losses.
InsurancePlans + commission 10,000 lives. Composite corporate agent approval. 826 hospitalisation claim episodes, ₹4.47 Cr insurer-paid value, 68.7% in Bengaluru. 6.88 −44.9% 42% gross margin. The entire decline is one cancelled B2B2C contract: ₹7.25 Cr in FY26 to a ₹1.48 Cr tail. Retail and MSME ₹4.71 Cr, −6.5%. Commission ₹0.69 Cr, +263% at close to 100% margin.
SoftwareClinikk OS Three proprietary apps (doctor, patient, operations), openEHR with FHIR, ABDM-ready, integration hub for labs, pharmacies, hospitals, insurers. nil ₹1.25 Cr assigned value, defined as our cost to rebuild. Zero external customers. The Company Book itself lists billing, test coverage and DPDP controls as open debt.
Health recordsData ~90,000 unique patients, 224,924 encounters, 34,224 patients with repeat encounters. nil ₹35 L one-time assigned value. Company-stated counts; consent basis and DPDP position not evidenced.

Company level, from the MIS

Revenue ₹14.71 Cr FY26 to ₹9.24 Cr FY27E (−37%); strip out the cancelled contract and the rest grows. Gross margin ₹7.77 Cr to ₹4.34 Cr, holding at 47%. Burn ₹4.71 Cr to ₹1.58 Cr (−66%) on an operating cost base cut from ₹12.48 Cr to ₹5.92 Cr, with HQ salaries assumed to fall from ₹15 L to ₹8 L a month — a cut only four months in.

02
Why we should do this: four plays
Their case, then my read and my confidence on each.
1
Funnel for surgeries · Assured
Clinikk GPs are the top of a surgical funnel we currently rent from Google.

Their case: 2,815 non-member walk-ins a month × 1.28% walk-in-to-hospitalisation = 36 IPD a month, 432 a year, ₹64.8 L a year to Assured at ₹15,000 per IPD. Scales with walk-ins; our traffic reaches the hubs at zero acquisition cost.

My read

Direction right, base overstated. The Company Book shows 2,331 non-member visits a month in Jan to Jul 2026, not 2,815, and the 1.28% ratio is drawn from insured members. I underwrite ₹40 to 45 L a year at today's volume; the upside is our traffic, not theirs.

Confidence: high near-term at 12 hubs · long-term rides on play 4

2
Monetizing software · Clinikk OS
A working clinic OS for the price of one year of engineering.

Doctor, patient and operations apps live across 12 hubs, standards-based records, integrations built. Valued at ₹1.25 Cr, our cost to rebuild. Their plan: sell it to clinics already on Practo, profit of ₹1 L a month rising ₹1 L each month.

My read

Cost avoidance is real if we intend to build this anyway, and we do. Revenue is not: zero external customers, no pipeline behind the profit curve. Value it at build cost, never a revenue multiple, after a code audit.

Confidence: high on cost avoidance · low on the revenue line

3
Insurance play · Freedom Plan adjacency
A live corporate agent licence and claims desk, next to what Freedom Plan is trying to do.

10,000 lives at ₹5,000 revenue per life (₹4,000 IPD share plus ₹1,000 OPD add-on), five salespeople adding 20 lives a month each, claims suite from initiation to settlement. Their projection: ₹3.7 Cr Year 1 EBITDA at 74%.

My read

The number I do not believe. The MIS shows insurance at 42% gross margin, shrinking 45%. The 74% case books ₹4,000 of an ₹8,000 premium to Clinikk; that needs checking against the insurer contract and IRDAI expense rules. Value the licence, claims capability and lives. Projection at zero.

Confidence: high on licence and claims value · low on projected EBITDA

4
Franchise network of GP clinics · FOCO
FOCO is the only clinic format in this deal that makes money, and the one we can scale.

FOCO revenue ₹0.23 to 0.67 Cr (+191%), EBITDA positive, franchisee carries capex and ramp losses, no fixed or marketing cost to Clinikk. Compact format: ground floor, GP plus care coordinator, ~100 pharmacy SKUs at 85% GM, Clinikk OS. COCO loses ₹1.5 Cr a year on ₹1.7 Cr revenue.

My read

Where long-term value sits, and where the brand risk in section 04 becomes real. Near-term: stop COCO expansion, convert or close hubs that cannot reach unit breakeven, grow FOCO. The Month 6 COCO breakeven in the Acquisition Document has no support in three years of history; I do not plan on it.

Confidence: medium · format proven at small scale, not at 50 units

03
What we would take on
Burn, the deferred wage bill, and the balance sheet. New since the last pre-read.

Burn is not the number that matters. ₹1.92 Cr of deferred expenses — future founder salaries — sit outside it, and ₹1.34 Cr of that lands in the eight months we would fund.

The MIS carries two separate measures and they diverge sharply in exactly the period Practo would carry. Burn is the cash operating loss: ₹1.58 Cr for FY27E, of which ₹0.87 Cr is already incurred and ₹0.71 Cr falls in Aug 2026 to Mar 2027. Final EBITDA adds deferred expenses and one-time items, giving ₹3.94 Cr — and for the Aug-to-Mar stretch it is ₹2.31 Cr against ₹0.71 Cr of burn, more than three times. The gap is the founders' deferred pay. Whether we inherit that obligation or it is settled at closing is a term-sheet question, not an accounting one, and it is worth more than the entire first-year cash burn.

₹ CrFY25FY26FY27E Apr–Jul '26
incurred
Aug '26–Mar '27
we would fund
Revenue14.4314.719.243.076.17
Gross margin7.527.774.341.472.88
Total operating cost13.2412.485.922.343.59
of which HQ / G&A6.565.892.341.051.29
Burn(5.72)(4.71)(1.58)(0.87)(0.71)
Deferred — future founder salaries—0.651.920.591.34
One-time—0.270.440.170.27
Final EBITDA(5.72)(5.62)(3.94)(1.63)(2.31)

The balance sheet is the other half of what transfers. Assets of ₹1.18 Cr against ₹3.31 Cr of payable liabilities — a net position of (₹2.13 Cr), which lands squarely in the ₹2 to 3 Cr of liability the Acquisition Document flagged without characterising. ₹57.00 L of employee obligations is confirmed as not payable and is excluded; ₹54.19 L of disputed amounts is excluded on instruction. Employee obligations are still the largest single line at 28% of the total.

₹ LakhAmount
Assets
Tangible assets — depreciated59.94
Rental deposits32.54
Commission receivable8.18
Inventory7.95
Cash and equivalents6.35
Receivables2.71
Total assets117.67
Liabilities, payable
Employee obligations net of ₹57.00 L94.32
Member and customer contingent72.66
Borrowings, related-party55.24
Trade payables and accruals39.05
Franchise deposits21.47
Insurance and claims20.60
Property and lease15.33
Statutory and tax dues12.38
Total liabilities331.05
Net position(213.38)

What I would negotiate on the schedule

₹72.66 L of member and customer obligations is contingent, arising only on a one-go shutdown of the plan business with refunds to customers we can no longer serve. We are not shutting it down, so I underwrite the net position at (₹1.41 Cr) and treat the balance as a wind-down scenario, not a liability.

₹1.92 Cr of deferred founder pay is the live term. Either it is settled by the sellers at closing or it is priced into consideration. It should not arrive as a surprise post-close.

Four exposures sit at nil — contract termination, litigation and regulatory, wind-down and transition costs, future transition funding. Nil is a claim, not a finding; each needs confirming in diligence.

Year 1 arithmetic on my numbers

Against us: ₹0.71 Cr of burn we fund from August, ₹2.13 Cr of net liabilities assumed, and ₹1.34 Cr of deferred pay crystallising in the same window.

For us: ₹40 to 45 L of Assured downstream, ₹1.25 Cr of software build cost avoided (one-time), ₹35 L for the records (one-time), and ₹2.90 Cr of insurance gross margin on a base that shrank 45%.

Net: this does not pay for itself in Year 1. The case is strategic — the funnel, FOCO and the licence — and price and earn-out have to reflect that rather than the 74% insurance projection.

04
The risk to settle first
Our own brand of clinics on our own marketplace.

The moment a Practo-branded clinic appears in our search results, every hospital and GP that pays to be there has a reason to call us a competitor.

The marketplace works because we are neutral. Hospitals pay for placement and send us Assured cases on the understanding that we route demand on merit. An owned clinic network in the same catchments changes that in three ways. GPs on the marketplace in JP Nagar, HSR or Koramangala see us competing for their walk-ins. Hospitals on Assured see our own GPs deciding where 432 surgeries a year go. Insurers see us as both distributor and provider. The conflict is small at 12 hubs and large at 200 franchised ones, which is exactly the play carrying the most value. Amazon's private labels and Google Shopping (€2.4 Bn EU self-preferencing fine, 2017) are the cautionary cases; PharmEasy owning Thyrocare while listing rival labs is the closest Indian analogue.

Option A

Keep the Clinikk brand, publish neutrality rules

No Practo badge on hubs. Listed as one provider among others, no ranking preference, written Assured referral rules that hospitals can read. Franchise under Clinikk.

Cost: some of the traffic-synergy upside. Gain: the marketplace stays credible while FOCO proves itself.

My recommendation, first 18 months

Option B

Practo-branded clinics

Maximum funnel, maximum conflict. This is Practo deciding to become a provider, which is a board question, not a corporate development one.

Revisit only once FOCO is at 25+ units with positive EBITDA and we have data on how listed GPs and hospitals actually respond.

Not now

Option C

Separate entity, services agreement

Clinikk sits in its own entity, Practo supplies traffic and software under contract. Cleanest governance answer, weakest integration, and the founders' incentives drift.

Use if legal or the board wants a hard wall rather than a policy wall.

Fallback
05
Hub ratings as the quality benchmark
All 12 Google Maps listings, read directly on 5 September 2026.
Health hubRatingGoogle reviews
4.87
Weighted average across 12 hubs, 6,861 reviews
8 of 12
Hubs at 4.9. Lowest-rated hub is 4.8
84% / 45%
Repeat rate, members / non-members. Investor deck

What patients say, recurring review themes

Friendly doctor (69 mentions), polite staff (27), clear explanations (24). The praise is about the consultation itself, not the premises or the price. That is the asset: a GP experience patients rate 4.8 or better at every one of 12 locations, with no hub below the floor.

Why this is the benchmark I would hold the deal to

Clinical quality is the one thing here we cannot build by writing a cheque, and it is what makes the Assured funnel and the FOCO play work: a referral from a 4.9 GP carries weight, a franchise carrying a 4.9 average is sellable. Every franchised hub is held to a 4.8 Google floor, measured on public listings rather than internal NPS, and a hub below it for two quarters is a convert-or-close candidate. That is also my answer to the Practo-brand question: we do not need our badge on the door for the quality to travel.

The Company Book quotes ≈23,290 reviews at 4.78; that count is not reproducible from the listings, so I use the direct read. Bannerghatta Road currently shows a temporarily-closed status. Deck adds Play Store 4.7 and an NPS of 91, both company-stated.

My recommendation in three lines

Confidence stated by horizon. Near-term is 12 months, long-term is three years.

Decision 1 · Proceed

Go to diligence, price on what exists

Value retail, FOCO, the software at build cost and the licence with its 10,000 lives. Insurance EBITDA projection at zero. Software revenue at zero.

Decision 2 · Settle the schedule

Deferred founder pay and the liability list, before signing

₹1.92 Cr of deferred pay settled by sellers or priced in. Net liabilities underwritten at (₹1.41 Cr), with the four nil exposures confirmed.

Confidence

High near-term, mixed long-term

Near-term high: Assured funnel at 12 hubs, software cost avoidance. Long-term medium: FOCO at scale. Long-term low: insurance economics as projected.

COCO: company-owned, company-operated. FOCO: franchise-owned, company-operated. IPD: in-patient department. GM: gross margin. MIS: management information system. ABDM: Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission. DPDP: Digital Personal Data Protection Act. IRDAI: Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India. B2B2C: plans sold through a corporate partner to its workforce. FY27E: April 2026 to March 2027, four months actual plus eight forecast.
Sources: Clinikk company MIS ("for claude" tab) and "Assets and Liabilities" tab; Clinikk Company Book for Practo Corp Dev (18 Aug 2026); Clinikk Acquisition Document; Clinikk investor deck; Google Maps listings read 5 Sep 2026. Assured and Freedom Plan are Practo programmes.
Decision brief · Clinikk