“As far as healthcare is concerned we continue to see opportunity across the landscape,” said Abrar Mir, managing partner, Quadria Capital, speaking at the HealthInvestor Asia 2016 Summit. But, he emphasised, that the landscape is changing. “The centre of gravity is shifting from the West to the East”.

The challenge for the private equity industry is that “we don’t make money out of trends”. The blame for this, what Mir called craziness, lies at the feet of the public markets. “Valuations in the sector are absolutely crazy,” he added.  

All panellists agreed that the key is to focus. “Primary care is a hot topic because of the gap between supply and demand, between public and private we see a gap for a market consolidator,” said Cecilia Wang, Asia healthcare investment lead, Partners Group.

Her point was picked up by Anne Kim, investment director, Heritas Capital Management. One advantage she has is that Heritas, which tends to invest between US$5 million and US$25 million, is a hybrid between a family and a private office. “We are more growth equity focused and start up vc,” she said. This is thanks to its position as part of the IMC Group.

She speaks of a recent hospital investment in Sarawak. “There is not a lot of interest there to the big hospital groups yet. We saw opportunity to go into market with more reasonable competition”.

There is no doubt that healthcare private equity majors have arrived in Asia, said Vikram Kapur, partner, Bain & Company. He pointed out that not only was last year a record, the year before that was a record too. “You are starting to see momentum,” he said.

What separates winners from the losers is an activist mindset. “People are getting under hood of the business”.