Amplifon quits India
The world's largest hearing care retailer has left India. Its own disclosure shows the business it sold to Hearzap turned over about €12 million and dragged on group profits. Neither side disclosed the price.
Selling a loss-making business to Hyderabad's Hearzap
The world's largest hearing care retailer has left India, selling its local business to Hyderabad-based Hearzap and taking with it a unit that was dragging on group profitability.
Hearzap said this week it had completed the acquisition, taking its network to 420 centres. Amplifon, listed in Milan and operating in 24 countries, disclosed in May that the Indian business comprised about 115 direct clinics and 460 employees, generated roughly EUR 12 million in revenue in 2025, marginal against group turnover, and had a negative effect on group EBITDA. The sale followed a strategic review under Amplifon's Fit4Growth cost programme, and the company said the divestment would improve its adjusted EBITDA margin. Neither side disclosed the price.
That is the harder reading of a deal Hearzap has presented as acquiring global clinical expertise. Both can be true: Amplifon's clinical standards are well regarded, and its exit says something about the economics of selling hearing aids in India, where devices are largely paid for out of pocket, insurance coverage is thin and trained audiologists are scarce outside large cities.
Hearzap, backed by 360 ONE Asset Management, expects combined revenue above INR 230 crore, rising to about INR 250 crore this financial year and towards INR 500 crore by FY2029. Roughly half the current figure is expected to come from the business it has just bought.
Its own numbers have moved. In May the company said the combined network would total 430 points of sale; the completion release says 420 centres. It is targeting 500 by 2027, having said in September 2024, after buying a majority stake in Patna's Speech and Hearing Care, that it aimed for 250 stores by 2026.
Integration will run twelve months with Amplifon staff retained, the company said, alongside planned investment in AI-enabled diagnostics and tele-audiology.
