HealthTech

Slim waist, fat margins: Hospitals bulk up their weight-loss business

Anuj Suvarna

November 13, 2025 | 7 Min Read

India's private hospitals are carving out high-margin weight-loss divisions powered by GLP-1 drugs, turning obesity care into a more lucrative business than traditional medical services, but the shift raises questions about access, ethics, and affordability.

A small crowd waits outside a glass-walled clinic on the second floor of a private hospital in Bengaluru. The sign above reads Metabolic Health and Weight Management Centre. Most of those in line aren’t suffering from chronic illnesses. They’ve come for something else: a prescription for semaglutide, the GLP-1 drug that has turned into a global symbol of medicalised weight loss. Inside, a counsellor takes BMI (body mass index) readings while a pharmacist explains dosage schedules.

Read this article for free

In addition, access 50+ archived articles and 3 new articles every month

Join our community of 100,000+ top executives, VCs, entrepreneurs, and brightest student minds

Trusted by the best

Karthik Reddy

Blume Ventures

The CapTable brings a refreshing set of insights for us at the Blume team, highlighting stories that bring together the underlying business and founders with that of investors' journeys with these startups. It's an important perspective that very few bring to startup ecosystem enthusiasts.

Latest Articles

The Death (and reinvention) of loyalty in India’s online shopping

Swiggy, Flipkart, and Lenskart now run multiple loyalty programmes. Zepto sells one for Re 1. Blinkit has none. All this signals something larger. Loyalty is dying. Or at least it is morphing into something that may not be characterised as loyalty anymore.

Pranav Balakrishnan

Inside Unacademy’s potential sale to upGrad and the end of edtech’s golden age

As PhysicsWallah goes public and Byju’s battles insolvency, Unacademy’s potential merger with upGrad marks the end of edtech’s gold-rush years—a reckoning that’s turning India’s once-frenzied learning revolution into a story of survival.

Nikhil Patwardhan

Glitter with risks: SEBI’s warning and India’s digital gold dilemma

Behind SEBI’s recent caution against ‘digital gold’ lies a larger story—about India’s fixation with gold, uneasy romance with financial innovation, and the risks of regulatory gaps. It’s also about the future of regulation, and how India’s financial guardians can keep pace with progress.

Dr Srinath Sridharan

Urban Company’s fastest-growing vertical is also its biggest drag

Insta Help, Urban Company’s on-demand, quick housekeeping service, is fuelling growth but also bleeding money. The Rs 44-crore loss in Q2 FY26 pulled the company back into the red. The next few quarters will test whether it becomes UC’s biggest moat or its costliest experiment.

Shivani Verma

How Brand Candere is emerging from Kalyan’s shadows

Once a low-key acquisition, Candere is now central to Kalyan Jewellers’ push into lightweight jewellery and omnichannel retail, as young Indians look for more affordable alternatives to traditional jewellery

Parvathi Benu

Convinced that The Captable stories and insights
will give you the edge?

Convinced that The Captable stories
and insights will give you the edge?

Subscribe Now

Stories

Explore