स्तम्भ Stambh · Udyamnīti

Introducing IndiaMedica: one case manager from the first report to the flight home

In September I said I intended to build the layer between a frightened family abroad and an operating theatre in India. It now exists. IndiaMedica is an independent guide to India’s accredited hospitals and one person who stays with the patient all the way.

Nikhil Sharma · उद्यमनीति Udyamnīti · 15 November 2026 · 3 min read

Composed from IndiaMedica brand art: IndiaMedica brand art · Pexels

I am the founder of IndiaMedica. Partner hospitals pay IndiaMedica a referral fee when a patient it introduces is treated. Nothing here is medical advice.

In September I wrote one sentence I have not stopped thinking about. Nobody frightened buys a hospital. They buy whoever answers the phone.

In [India Is Already the Doctor](/soch/vimarsh/india-is-already-the-doctor) I declared an interest. I said I intended to build the layer between a frightened family abroad and an operating theatre in India. I also said plainly that it did not exist yet.

Today I can introduce it. It is called IndiaMedica and it is open at indiamedica.com.

What IndiaMedica is

IndiaMedica is an independent guide to India’s accredited hospitals and one case manager who stays with a patient from the first report to the flight home.

It is not a hospital. It does not give medical advice. The treating doctors make every clinical decision. Our work is everything around the medicine. Here is how a journey runs:

  1. Send your reports. A case manager reviews them for free and with no obligation.
  2. Compare real options. We share the reports with suitable NABH- and JCI-accredited hospitals and bring back treatment opinions and written estimates.
  3. Decide with the facts in hand. The family chooses. We will say so if a hospital we do not work with is the better choice.
  4. One person arranges the journey. The hospital’s visa invitation letter, the e-Medical and attendant visas, airport pickup, a stay near the hospital and an interpreter if needed.
  5. Follow-up after home. We stay in touch with the treating doctors after the patient flies back.

IndiaMedica: treatment in India, handled with care. An independent guide to India’s accredited hospitals and one case manager from the first report to the flight home. indiamedica.com.

Why it had to exist

India has the doctors and it has the price. A heart bypass listed at $123,000 in the United States is listed at $7,900 in India. What India has not had is trust at the scale it deserves.

In the founder’s essay on the IndiaMedica site, The Argument for India, I set out the numbers from the Government of India’s own sources. India received about five lakh medical travellers in 2025, down from 6.4 lakh in 2023. Roughly two in three came from one country. South Korea, with a fraction of our doctors, treated around two million foreign patients in the same year.

India does not have a talent problem or a price problem. It has a trust problem. And trust is a discipline, not a destiny.

Trust is written into the rules

So we wrote the rules before we wrote anything else. The first rule is how we are paid.

The case review is free for patients. Partner hospitals pay IndiaMedica a referral fee when a patient we introduce is treated. That fee never changes the price the patient pays and it never decides which hospital we suggest. We say this on the site because a family should know how the people advising them are paid before they trust the advice.

Then there are six things we will not do:

  1. We invent nothing. No made-up testimonials, ratings, success rates, patient numbers or prices.
  2. We do not promise cures. No adviser can. We help a patient reach the right specialists and understand their advice.
  3. Badges must be proven. An accreditation appears only with a link to its source and the date we checked it. It disappears after a year unless checked again.
  4. We follow India’s law. No donor sourcing for transplants. No surrogacy for foreign nationals. No visa shortcuts.
  5. Health data belongs to the patient. Reports go only to hospitals the patient agrees to and are deleted on request.
  6. Medicine stays with doctors. We are not a hospital and we do not give medical advice.

Built for the families India has been missing

A national export that depends on one neighbour is a single point of failure. So IndiaMedica is built for many front doors at once.

Every page is written in each language and the case manager replies in the patient’s language. Today that means English, Bengali, Arabic, Russian and French for families in Bangladesh, Iraq, Oman, the UAE, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Somalia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Senegal, the United Kingdom and the United States.

It covers eleven treatment areas from cardiac care, orthopaedics and cancer care to transplant, fertility and Ayurveda. It guides patients to medical hubs in nine cities from Delhi NCR and Mumbai to Chennai, Bengaluru and Kochi.

The people behind it

I am not a clinician and I will never pretend to be one. My work is the standard of service around the medicine: arrival, stay, language and a clear plan.

I founded Elevated India on the conviction that India is under-presented, not under-endowed. IndiaMedica is the same conviction applied to the journeys that matter most. It is a sister house of Elevated India.

I did not build it alone. My friend Dr Vishal Khurana is a co-founder of IndiaMedica.

Dr Vishal Khurana, DM (Gastroenterology). Co-founder, IndiaMedica. A gastroenterologist and liver specialist. Director and Head of Department, Gastroenterology and Hepatobiliary Sciences, at Metro Heart Institute with Multispeciality in Faridabad. MBBS and MD (Medicine), Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University. DM (Gastroenterology), IPGME&R, Kolkata. Member, National Academy of Medical Sciences. Fellow, American College of Gastroenterology. Dr Khurana practises at Metro Heart Institute, Faridabad. IndiaMedica suggests hospitals on the merits of each case and gives no preference to any hospital where a co-founder works.

Dr Raju Hajela is our Medical Advisor. He advises on the accuracy and tone of our patient guides. He does not treat IndiaMedica patients, choose hospitals or receive referral fees.

What comes next

The wager from September still stands. By 31 December 2029 India will be named in the top two global destinations for cardiac and orthopaedic procedures by at least two published international indices, ranked on outcome and not on price. IndiaMedica is my own bet on helping that happen.

Somewhere tonight a family is sitting with a diagnosis and a number. If you know one, send them to IndiaMedica. The first review is free and someone will answer.

With gratitude

Nikhil Sharma

IndiaMedica helps international patients reach accredited hospitals in India and looks after everything around the treatment. Learn more at indiamedica.com or read how IndiaMedica is paid.

Read the argument behind it: [India Is Already the Doctor](/soch/vimarsh/india-is-already-the-doctor) and [Nobody frightened buys a hospital](/soch/sutra/nobody-frightened-buys-a-hospital).