SEATTLE — Columbia Pacific Management, a Seattle-based international healthcare provider, and an affiliated company (a joint venture collectively referred to as “Columbia Pacific”) are entering the India senior housing market with the acquisition of a major senior housing operator, and plan to embark on a significant expansion of their India senior housing portfolio over the next five years.
Columbia Pacific has purchased Serene Senior Care, which currently operates 735 residential units in four senior housing communities in South India and plans to have 1,700 units under management by fall 2017.
Columbia Pacific Management is already one of the largest and fastest-growing healthcare providers in Asia.
Under the Serene brand, Columbia Pacific Management will operate and provide services to India senior care communities in which residents purchase their own retirement villas, apartments or houses.
Columbia Pacific has aggressive expansion plans in India, which is projected in the next decade to be the world’s most populous country, with a fast-growing senior population and an emergent middle class. Already the country has an elderly population of 100 million, more than the population of the United Kingdom and Canada combined.
Within five years, Columbia Pacific plans to more than quintuple the number of the units Serene Senior Care has under management, to 5,000 units. Columbia Pacific will undergo its expansion by building new senior housing communities, with the first two planned in Bangalore.
“Columbia Pacific Management has been operating hospitals in India for more than a decade, and we are one of the most experienced operators of senior housing both in the U.S. and China,” said Matthew Powell, Development Director for Columbia Pacific Management. “We’re thrilled to meet the tremendous demand and care for India’s senior population with communities designed for the growing middle class.”
Columbia Pacific Management’s hospital companies operate 28 hospitals and three clinics across India, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Kenya under the brands Columbia Asia, Columbia China and Columbia Africa.
Columbia Asia, which operates hospitals in India, Malaysia and Indonesia, opened its first hospital in India in 2005 and now has 11 modern, efficient multispecialty hospitals around India.
Columbia Asia is the only healthcare provider in Asia to operate hospitals in so many countries under a single brand, and one of the few large, multinational providers in Asia to build the vast majority of its hospitals itself.
The acquisition of Serene Senior Care is a joint investment of Columbia Pacific Management and an opportunistic strategy fund managed by Columbia Pacific Advisors, an affiliated Seattle-based alternative investment firm.
One of the founders of both Columbia Pacific Management and Columbia Pacific Advisors, Dan Baty, is a pioneer in the senior living industry in the U.S. and Europe.
In 2011, Columbia Pacific Management received government approval to open the first foreign-owned, for-profit senior care facility in China. The company now owns and operates three senior care facilities there – two in Shanghai and one in Beijing –with a pipeline of additional communities under development.
The principals and employees of Columbia Pacific Advisors, meanwhile, have more than 80 years of investment, development and operational experience in the senior housing sector, and have executed on more than $10 billion in related transactions in the last 25 years. Columbia Pacific Advisors has built an acquisition and development pipeline that consists of over 3,300 senior housing units, over 1,200 multi-family units and more than 1.2 million square feet of commercial space around the U.S.
“Columbia Pacific Management, directly and through its affiliated companies, already has such a tremendous history of caring for seniors around the world,” said P. Viswanathan, Managing Director of Serene Senior Care. “We are well positioned to provide India’s senior population with communities built to the highest international standards and with decades of experience.”
