From 8 centres to
6 new markets,
in 2 years.

The Client

A hospital group with clinical excellence and an underleveraged brand.

Ankura Hospitals is one of India's leading women and child hospital networks. With eight centres already operational, the clinical credibility was beyond question. But in a competitive market — where patients increasingly research, compare, and choose hospitals based on perception as much as reputation — Ankura's brand presence wasn't keeping pace with its clinical reality.

ThoughtRadius was brought in to change that. Not to rebuild what Ankura was, but to make the world see what it already had.

Phase One

Building a brand worthy of the hospitals behind it.

The first phase of the engagement was foundational. Ankura needed a brand strategy that could carry the weight of expansion — a consistent voice, a visual language, and a social presence that could compete in markets where established names had a head start.

Brand Ambassador

Significant milestones require significant moments.

As part of a wider brand strategy, Ankura signed Sonu Sood as Brand Ambassador — a decision that immediately elevated the brand's national visibility and brought a voice of trust and credibility to its positioning in the women and child healthcare space.

Internal Branding

The brand had to live inside the organisation, not just outside it.

ThoughtRadius designed the internal branding for Ankura's corporate office — ensuring that the brand identity was experienced by staff and stakeholders at the heart of the organisation. When a brand is built from the inside out, it communicates consistently everywhere.

The Covid Chapter

Marketing a hospital during a pandemic is a different brief entirely.

When Covid arrived, ThoughtRadius ran Ankura's Covid marketing campaign — navigating the extraordinary challenge of communicating care, safety, and clinical reassurance at a time when public anxiety about hospitals was at its peak.

During peak uncertainty, Ankura's communications needed to reassure families that maternal and child healthcare could not be deferred — and that Ankura was the safest place to receive it. ThoughtRadius built that message carefully, responsibly, and with the gravity the moment deserved.

Phase Two

Six new markets. Six full campaigns. One brand that could travel.

The second phase of the partnership was about growth. Ankura was expanding — into new Hyderabad markets and into new cities entirely. Each launch required a full campaign: local relevance, brand consistency, and the ability to introduce Ankura to an audience that had never encountered it before.

Each launch was a full campaign: OOH, digital, press and on-ground activation. The challenge across six markets was maintaining brand coherence while allowing each campaign to feel locally relevant. A Pune patient and a Vijayawada patient are different people with different healthcare contexts. The brand had to speak to both without feeling generic to either.

The Two-Year Arc

From brand building to brand expansion. In that order.

What This Taught Us

Brand building is not a cost. It's the infrastructure that makes growth possible.

Ankura's expansion across six new markets was possible not just because the hospitals were excellent — they always were. It was possible because by the time the launch campaigns ran, there was a brand strong enough to carry the weight of new cities, new audiences, and new competition.

The two years of brand building, social media, OOH, internal branding, and Covid communications weren't a warm-up act. They were the foundation. The expansion campaigns were built on top of them — and that is exactly how it should work.