RIS Study Puts Ayush Services Economy at $36.92 Billion

The Ayush services sector is now one of the fastest growing service industries in the country, worth an estimated US$36.92 billion in FY2024-25, according to a study by the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS). The sector has been expanding at a compound annual rate of 16.91 per cent since FY2022-23. The report was formally brought out at the 11th Ayurveda Day function held in Nagpur on 23 September.

How the estimate was built

This is the first time the money value of Ayush services has been measured through a nationally scaled survey taken at the level of individual establishments. The survey covered 15,914 establishments across all six Ayush systems. Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, Secretary of the Ministry of Ayush, said the exercise gives policy makers an evidence base for investment and reform decisions. Professor Sachin Kumar Sharma, Director General of RIS, said the numbers show Ayush is no longer a fringe activity but a knowledge-based service economy.

Where the revenue comes from

Clinics and day-care centres together account for more than 71 per cent of the sector’s revenue. Among the six systems, Ayurveda is the single largest, at close to 48 per cent of the whole.

Jobs, women and wellness

The sector directly supports 1.76 million livelihoods, with more than a million of those jobs sitting in local and standalone clinics. Women make up 43 per cent of the whole Ayush workforce and cross half the staff in several organised segments: above 60 per cent in spas and resorts offering Ayush services, 58 per cent in educational institutions, 57 per cent in day-care centres and 53 per cent in hospitals. The wellness segment, which includes yoga centres, spas and resorts, grew at a 21.29 per cent compound rate, with yoga centres alone adding about 75 per cent to their revenue over two years.

Foreign patients and the road to 2047

Medical Value Travel brought in US$1.77 billion in FY25. Foreign patients are only about 5 per cent of patient numbers yet contribute an estimated 15 to 25 per cent of revenue in the hospital segment, partly because therapies such as Panchakarma and residential yoga keep a patient in for 5 to 11 days on average. A working website raises an establishment’s odds of drawing international patients 3.6 times, and NABH or ISO accreditation roughly doubles them. The study projects the sector could reach US$216 billion to US$318 billion by 2047, and sets out four pillars for getting there: the knowledge value chain, enterprise and institutional capability, global competitiveness with Medical Value Travel, and innovation through digital technology and artificial intelligence.