India’s Next Great Export: Medical Tourism

Across advanced and developing economies alike, rising costs, aging populations, workforce shortages, and long waiting times are today creating ever-widening gaps between healthcare demand and supply. Millions of patients worldwide are seeking high-quality medical care that is affordable, timely, and reliable.

India stands uniquely positioned to respond to this global demand and become the world’s leading destination for medical tourism, while also transforming its healthcare system into one of our most potent export earners and employment creators. It can offer the most advanced surgical, diagnostic, and wellness services at a fraction of the costs charged in developed countries, while also providing traditional healing through Ayurveda and Yoga. It is an opportunity grounded in India’s comparative advantages, backed by proven capabilities and a support system.

A Global Market in Search of Solutions

Healthcare costs are rising dramatically across the world. In the USA, per capita healthcare spending exceeds $12,000 annually, nearly five times the global average. In many OECD countries, complex surgeries such as joint replacements, cardiac procedures, and cancer treatments involve waiting periods ranging from six months to over two years.  As these countries age faster, the global healthcare workforce shortages are projected to reach 11 million professionals by 2030, according to the WHO. These pressures are already driving cross-border healthcare.

The global medical tourism market is estimated to surpass $100 billion by 2030. Patients are no longer traveling only for cosmetic or elective procedures; they are increasingly seeking complex surgeries, oncology care, fertility treatment, organ transplants, and long-term rehabilitation. India has emerged as one of the most trusted destinations in this space, attracting patients from 75 developing and developed countries for advanced treatments and wellness therapies. Its medical tourism market is projected to grow from $18 billion in 2025 to $58 billion by 2035, according a KPMG estimate.

India’s Current Position: Strong but Underleveraged

India’s medical tourism sector has displayed robust growth over the post-COVID years, with the arrival of foreign tourists for medical purposes soaring from under 200,000 in 2020 to over 640,000 in 2024, 75% from Bangladesh alone. The sector is poised for 15% growth, following the simplified e-Visa process announced in the Union Budget 2025-26, which will further enhance India’s appeal, with medical tourism expanding beyond metro cities.

The Government’s e-medical visa and e-medical attendant visa facilities today extend to citizens of over 171 countries, reducing the earlier barriers to access.

However, India’s growth in medical has occurred largely without a unified national strategy, driven instead by private sector excellence, clinical outcomes, and India’s compelling cost advantages, with complex surgeries and procedures costing between 10 and 20%, and cancer therapies and organ transplants at one-third the cost seen in advanced economies at comparable and sometimes superior quality and patient care.

With over 700 internationally accredited hospitals, and in addition over 90,000 doctors and 150,000 nurses annually, which constitutes the largest English-speaking medical workforce in the world, India matches and often transcends global benchmarks on patient satisfaction, while its public healthcare system remains dismal. But there are many strong contenders in this area: Thailand, Mexico, Turkiye, Malaysia, UAE, and Singapore. We must calibrate our policies carefully to benefit from realising their full potential or watch them unfold elsewhere.

Today, metros like Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru serve as medical tourism hubs, with 25% medical tourists choosing Tamil Nadu alone, while Kerala is positioning itself in wellness tourism destination, combining surgical care with holistic and Ayurvedic treatments.

But other states are lagging hopelessly behind in the healthcare value chains, and rural and semi-urban areas remain way behind in foundational healthcare infrastructure. Bridging this urban-rural divide remains a crucial agenda for Governments -not only for equitable domestic health outcomes but also for broadening the domestic supply base that supports the medical tourism sector.

Healthcare Exports and India’s Trade Imbalance

India’s current account deficit (CAD) in FY 2025 stood at $23 billion, with services exports playing a critical role in offsetting our trade imbalance. Other than IT and IT-enabled services - the backbone of our service exports - healthcare services can emerge as the next major pillar.

Unlike manufacturing exports, healthcare services have low-import dependence and generate high value, with 85% domestic components -comprising local doctors, nurses, technicians, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, hospital infrastructure, hospitality, and transport services. Every international patient contributes not only to hospital revenues but also to airlines, hotels, translators, wellness centres, and local businesses.

Estimates indicate that every 1,000 inbound medical tourists can create 80-100 jobs in associated services in these areas. Few export sectors offer this combination of scale, resilience, employment intensity, and domestic value creation. If the sector indeed contributes over $50 billion by 2035, as estimated, it will be able to balance our CAD and even generate a surplus. An Opportunity That Strengthens, Not Competes with, Domestic Healthcare

It is important to address a legitimate concern: Does medical tourism divert resources away from domestic patients? International experience suggests the opposite when managed well. Revenue from foreign patients enables hospitals to invest in advanced technology, expand capacity, cross-subsidize care for underserved populations, and retain top clinical talent within the country.

Countries such as Thailand and Turkey have demonstrated that medical tourism can coexist with-and even strengthen-universal healthcare systems. In India, medical value travel can support the development of centres of excellence across cardiology, oncology, orthopaedics, fertility care, transplants, Ayurveda, and rehabilitative medicine. With targeted investment, tier-2 and tier-3 cities can emerge as regional healthcare hubs, driving employment and economic development across states.

What a National Strategy Must Focus On

To fully realize this opportunity, India must move from organic growth to coordinated execution. Apart from simplification of e-Visa procedures, the Government’s “Heal in India” policy supports a unified national medical travel portal (indiahealthcaretourism.com) offering transparent information on accredited hospitals, treatment packages, and patient facilitation, expansion of international accreditation, including financial and technical support for hospitals seeking global certifications.

But much more would be required, like facilitating pricing transparency, standardisation of services, end-to-end patient facilitation infrastructure, multilingual support, digital health record interoperability, etc., to build trust and predictability for international patients and insurers and to support them even after they go back.

A Decade-Defining Opportunity

By 2030, demands from aging populations in Europe, Japan, and North America, as well as from developing regions across Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East for affordable and timely healthcare, will present India with unique opportunities to leverage its scale, talent, cost advantage, pharmaceutical manufacturing base, and digital health capabilities to emerge as the world’s leading healthcare partner.

India has long been known as the “pharmacy of the world.” The next step is to become the hospital of the world, delivering healing with compassion, quality, and affordability.

Healthcare can become India’s most humane export and its soft power, besides being a most powerful economic engine. With vision, policy support, strategic public-private synergies, and continued emphasis on quality, India can heal the world while strengthening its own economy. A nuanced policy and vision must combine political will with administrative synergy.

Govind Bhattacharjee, a former Director General, CAG of India, is currently a Professor at Arun Jaitley National Institute of Financial Management; Views presented are personal.

Ravi Garg is a public policy analyst and the Founding Director of India Senior Living Platform. Opinions expressed are personal; Views presented are personal.