Announcing Shamsheer Vayalil as the man responsible for building the biggest hospital network in the Gulf.

In the last decade, Shamsheer Vayalil, the founder and chairman of Burjeel Holdings, has built some of the most prestigious hospitals in the Gulf region, and he is laying the foundation for future expansions. 

The son-in-law of billionaire businessman MA Yusuff Ali, among the wealthiest and most powerful men in the Middle East, Vayalil has been busy building up one of the Gulf region’s biggest hospital networks for much of the past decade.

His father-in-law might have helped him early on, but Vayalil, a 46-year-old father of four, has been rewriting the rules of the game, with his hospital chain attracting top doctors from around the globe, and a clientele that includes the likes of film stars, sports legends, and top businessmen from across the world. In the process, Vayalil has also become the most recognized of Ali’s heirs, especially after the public listing of his healthcare company, Burjeel Holdings, a UAE-based hospital operator. 

Through VPS Healthcare, Vayalil’s family office, Vayalil oversees an investment portfolio covering various segments of health care, including a hospital chain, Burjeel Holdings, an on-site health care provider, Response Plus, a pharmaceutical company, LIFEPharma, cosmetics maker Ziva, and a dental college, Educare Institute.

That’s because taking time to reapply for a visa meant working at the Sheikh Khalifa Medical City, a flagship institution for the Abu Dhabi Health Services. Vayalil’s father was a businessman, trading in rice and food grains, and the children would spend their holidays with him in the bazaar (market) where Vayalil says he was introduced to the world of negotiations and conducting business.

In Abu Dhabi, Vayalil made good money after starting work at the Sheikh Khalifa Medical City, earning around $2,500 a month. In 2006, after working for a year, Vayalil quit his job as he set out to build his hospital.

“I think doctors are good entrepreneurs because they make decisions every day,” Vayalil says. Coincidentally, Vayalil’s entrepreneurial foray also took place around the same time as the Abu Dhabi government’s decision to make health insurance mandatory for its population, which meant that the healthcare sector in the country was set to undergo a transition.

“It was a slow start,” Vayalil says when I ask him if he took advice from his father-in-law, a veteran in doing business in the Middle East. With over 1,600 beds, Burjeel has the highest number of hospital beds in the UAE, and offers everything from cancer care to mother and child care services, treating over six million patients a year.

Burjeel Medical City (BMC), the group’s flagship hospital in Abu Dhabi, is the largest private hospital and comprehensive cancer center in the UAE. There was a very big gap in the market, and we were there at the right time in the right place with the right product. ” It also helped that, Vayalil says, the UAE is an easy country to do business in.

All that has meant that Vayalil, through Burjeel, wants UAE to emerge as a premier destination for health care in the region, helping thousands of patients avoid travel to the US and Europe. Today, with his business in UAE having scaled to a significant size, Vayalil is laying the groundwork for the next phase of growth with investments in Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Africa, where he sees enormous opportunities in the coming years.

We had a new hospital and I think it was about scaling up because we didn’t want to be a typical family office. ” Today, a bulk of Vayalil’s health care business includes three categories. Response Plus, a publicly listed company, and the group’s pre-hospital business, is the largest provider of onsite health care, occupational health solutions, and medical emergency services, in the UAE.

“We are a concierge service and I think that’s what we are moving towards,” Vayalil says.

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