The Serum Institute of India is in advanced talks to take its diagnostics arm into overseas markets through a joint venture with Trivitron Healthcare, The Indian Practitioner reported, citing an account first published by the trade outlet Digital Health News. The vaccine maker, led by Adar Poonawalla, is looking to raise its investment in MyLab Discovery Solutions, a Pune-based diagnostics company, and to pair it with Trivitron’s international reach. The talks are part of a wider effort by the Serum Institute group to diversify beyond vaccines into diagnostics and digital health, the report said.
The two sides plan a new company, provisionally called MyLab Trivitron Next Gen Technologies, The Indian Practitioner reported. The report described the structure as a way to separate existing liabilities and leave a cleaner platform for fresh investment and expansion abroad. It said the venture was meant to speed innovation, lift manufacturing capacity and carry MyLab’s diagnostics into international distribution. Terms have not been disclosed, and the transaction is still in due diligence, so the venture should be read as a deal in talks rather than a settled one.
What each side brings
MyLab was set up in 2016 and is based in Pune. It became widely known in India during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it developed the country’s first home-grown RT-PCR test kits, The Indian Practitioner reported, and it has since worked on molecular diagnostics and rapid testing. What it lacks is an international sales and manufacturing footprint.
Trivitron supplies that side. The Chennai company runs a diagnostics and medical-device portfolio spanning imaging systems, in-vitro diagnostics, intensive-care equipment and neonatal care, and it already operates in the United States, Europe and Asia, the report said. MyLab founder Hasmukh Rawal framed the venture as a route to “better international opportunities in distribution and manufacturing” through Trivitron’s existing network, while MyLab keeps its focus on higher-end technology. That access to markets and factories, rather than new science, is the main thing MyLab is buying.
The medical tourism angle
Diagnostics sit one step back from medical tourism, but the link is real. A healthcare destination competes on the tests it can run as well as the surgery it can perform, and molecular diagnostics, imaging and rapid testing are part of what international patients are buying when they travel for care. India’s cost edge in that care has long rested on doing more of the work at home, and cheaper local diagnostic tools feed the same edge. A hospital that can run its own tests quickly, and price them low, is easier to sell to a patient weighing a trip abroad.
The move fits a pattern in the Indian market, where health-technology firms are trying to attach themselves to the inbound patient trade. An Indian startup recently raised early funding to bring artificial intelligence to medical tourism, and the broader inbound business is projected to reach $16.2 billion by 2030. Whether diagnostics exports lift that trade or simply run beside it is a separate question, and one this deal does not answer.
Regulation is the part that will decide how far the tools travel. Selling diagnostic devices into the United States, Europe and Asia means clearing each market’s approvals, the kind of hurdle that Singapore cleared when its regulator reached the WHO’s top tier for medical devices. Trivitron’s existing presence in those markets is what shortens the road, because approvals and distribution take years to build alone.
What to watch
There is a standing way to read an announcement like this. A joint venture in due diligence is a plan, not a shipped product, and the gap between the two is where most such deals slip. The Serum Institute group has said it wants to move beyond vaccines into diagnostics and digital health, and this venture is a test of whether it can. The checkable markers are close and dated. Whether MyLab and Trivitron sign a definitive agreement, on what terms, and whether the new company books diagnostics sales in the United States, Europe and Asia rather than announcing the intent to, will settle it. Until a signed deal and a first overseas order appear, the medical tourism payoff stays hypothetical.