Dr Lal PathLabs Bets On Preventive Healthcare, Launches Premium Wellness Brand Sovaaka
The launch comes at a time when Dr Lal PathLabs continues to rely on volume-led growth, having not taken a price hike in the last three years despite inflationary pressures.
Dr Lal PathLabs has forayed deeper into preventive healthcare with the launch of Sovaaka, its premium wellness vertical, marking a strategic shift from traditional diagnostics toward personalised, predictive health management.
The flagship Sovaaka wellness centre has opened in Gurugram, offering curated wellness packages priced between Rs 11,000 and Rs 35,000.
Unlike conventional diagnostic centres, Sovaaka is positioned as a 360-degree preventive care platform, combining advanced diagnostics with pre- and post-test medical consultations, personalised diet plans, and risk profiling aimed at early detection of lifestyle and genetic diseases.
The company says the focus is not on premiumisation, but on hyper-customisation, with pricing linked to the depth and number of tests rather than branding alone.
"This is about moving from an illness-led model to a wellness-led approach," the management said, adding that Sovaaka is designed to identify early warning signs before conditions turn clinical, rather than intervening after disease onset.
The launch comes at a time when Dr Lal PathLabs continues to rely on volume-led growth, having not taken a price hike in the last three years despite inflationary pressures. The company said patient and test volumes are driving growth, and it has consciously stayed out of aggressive price wars that dominate routine diagnostics.
The National Capital Region remains the company’s largest market, contributing nearly one-third of total revenue, with a higher price-per-patient driven by a more advanced test mix. However, pricing across Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns remains largely clustered, with growth coming from expanding reach rather than higher prices.
On expansion, Dr Lal PathLabs reiterated plans to add 600–800 new collection centres in FY26, with a strong push into smaller towns. Meanwhile, the company expects its western India business, impacted earlier by IT integration challenges following the Suburban acquisition, to return to double-digit growth of 10–12% by Q4FY26.
As competition intensifies in wellness packages, particularly from digital health platforms, the company said quality, clinician relationships, and scale will help protect market share. With wellness offerings like Swasthfit already contributing over a quarter of revenue, Sovaaka is being positioned as the next growth lever in India’s evolving preventive healthcare market.
