Why Amplifon left India, and what Hearzap sees in the same clinics

Amplifon did not leave India for lack of customers: a local rival has just bought the same clinics and plans to grow. The reason it left is in its own numbers.

01What Amplifon sold

Amplifon agreed in May 2026 to sell its Indian business to Hearzap, the trading name of Hyderabad-based Hearing Solutions Pvt Ltd. The sale completed in August. No price was disclosed.

About 115 clinics that Amplifon ran itself moved across, with about 460 staff. In 2025 the business brought in roughly €12 million: about ₹115-120 crore at that year's average exchange rate, which is our conversion, not Amplifon's figure. Against group revenue of about €2.4 billion, that is half a percent.

Amplifon said the Indian business had a negative effect on group EBITDA, its operating profit before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. It gave no loss figure. For a group that size, a unit like this is a corner shop inside a department store. It can take as much management attention as a whole floor and barely shows in the takings.

03Same clinics, different cost to serve

The clinics serve the same patients in the same cities as before. What changed is everything sitting above them.

Cost to serve is what it takes to keep a business serving its customers, beyond the product itself. A clinic's rent, its audiologist's salary and its stock were Indian costs under either owner. On our reading, the difference lies in the layers a distant owner typically adds. Think of regional management, group systems and reporting built for another market, and senior attention flown in to review a sliver of the business. A Hyderabad head office that already runs a large network can spread its own costs over 115 more clinics.

What changed hands was not the clinics but the weight sitting on top of them.

As Haripriya V, who leads our investment banking work, pointed out, a local buyer rarely wins a deal like this on money. It wins because the same assets cost it less to run, so a business that weighed on a global group can pay its way for a local one.

05The number that will show whether it worked

Not the deal size, which nobody disclosed, and not the centre count. Watch revenue per centre a year after integration, once the clinics run on Hearzap's systems, prices and brand.

Hearzap has about 420 centres after the deal, according to press coverage, which also reported a target of 500 by 2027. That makes it a roll-up: a business that grows by buying or opening many small sites and running them as one network. Roll-ups tend to break in a familiar way. The count grows faster than what each centre earns, and thinner centres end up carrying a head office built for a bigger network.

If revenue per centre holds or rises as the network grows, the cost advantage is real. If it falls, the lighter overhead is being spent on sites that do not earn. Any founder buying clinics can track the same number for each purchase, a year on.