KKR & Co in advanced talks to buy stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd

US private equity firm KKR & Co, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, Bloomberg yesterday reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

Last month, media reports said that private equity firms TPG Capital and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company.

A successful deal could value SRL, India's largest medical-diagnostics company, at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), the report said.

SRL is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd., India's second-largest private hospital chain by market value, according to a filing with the stock exchange in August.

The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh who had sold their pharma company Ranbaxy to Daiichi Sankyo in 2008 (See: Daiichi acquires 52.5 per cent in Ranbaxy), will control a 40.6-per cent stake of SRL post listing.

SRL, formerly known as Super Religare Laboratories Ltd and changed its name to SRL Ltd in 2012,  is a subsidiary of Fortis Healthcare, run by Singh brothers.

It claims to be the largest diagnostics company in India with 356 labs including 4 reference labs, 40 NABL accredited labs, 4 CAP accredited labs, 5 international labs.

It also has 5,245 collection centers in India, 69 international collection centers, and provides services of testing samples for the multinational and Indian pharmaceutical companies / CROs undertaking Phase III/ IV clinical trial work.