For close to a decade, Ranjan Pai has been on the lookout to buy all the hospitals that fell within his blitzscaling path. Amid hits and misses, he’s reached the finish line.

On 23 March, as the IPO papers dropped, it became evident that the chairman of Manipal Health Enterprises has created a lattice of all the acquired hospital beds and strung them together with tidy numbers.

As the hospital chain with the widest geographical footprint across 14 states and union territories, Manipal pips Apollo Hospitals Enterprise to the post in the........

© The Ken