From Illness to Wellness: The New Way India Is Learning to Live

When I sit down with Ritesh Mastipuram, Founder and Managing Director, Ridhira Group, he doesn’t begin with numbers or trends. He begins with something far more human: a pause. “COVID,” he says, “enabled us to completely stay indoors for a long period of time. And for the first time, we managed as a human race to get a much, much, much higher perspective towards our life.”

He speaks of it not as an event but as a shift. A moment where the world collectively stopped, zoned out, and suddenly began asking, Who am I? What drives me? What are my primary motivators? That pause, he says, is what opened the doors to wellness in a way we had not seen before. “We realized there is illness and there is wellness. And by pursuing the path of wellness, I do not need to go towards illness.”

For him, wellness is not a trend. It is a rediscovery of wisdom we have always held. “Especially coming from South India and India as a whole,” he says, “the gift we have given the world is this whole concept of spirituality, which is a mystic for the Western world.” Add to that a country crossing the three thousand dollar per capita GDP mark, a moment when society shifts “from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset,” and the rise of wellness becomes almost inevitable.

And then there is longevity. “Suddenly you have a lifespan closer to 100,” he says. “Our grandparents died in their 60s and 70s, our parents are hearty and healthy in their 75s, 80s, 90s. And all of us are moving to 100, 120.” The real problem, he explains, is not lifespan. It is healthspan, the gap between how long we live and how long we live well.

“So suddenly,” he adds, “if you invest in wellness, you do not need to invest in your illness.”

For Ridhira Group, wellness is not new. “We have been in the wellness business for more than 70 years,” he says. “We are spiritually grounded as an organization with a deeper purpose.”

What is new is geography. Once, people travelled to Kerala, Rishikesh or Haridwar for holistic healing. Today, wellness arrives in metropolitan spaces, finding homes in cities like Hyderabad. “We are just at the beginning,” he says. “The shift is on its way. Wellness will be universal.”

To him, wellness is not a place but a mindset, an experience, an escape and a gateway. “People around wellness do not want to go to the same place again and again,” he says. “It is an unwind. It is an experience.”

As he explains the evolution of the Ridhira Group model, he describes it as “Airbnb meets home ownership meets wellness,” a way for people to own a place in one community and use wellness facilities across a wider network.

But he circles back to the nature of healing itself. “Allopathy is very specific to an immediate need,” he says. “But non-allopathic systems like Ayurveda, naturopathy, yoga, Siddha or Unani work on preventing illnesses.” He adds that even the government now acknowledges this shift, with preventive wellness recognized under certain health insurance provisions. “That is a big floodgate opener,” he says.

In this environment, wellness has become serious business. “There is a new space emerging,” he says, “a crossover of a hotel and a hospital, a space where people love to go to ensure they do not have to go to a hospital.”

When asked to define wellness, he returns to the personal. “Wellness is anything that makes you feel deeply connected to your purpose. A reason why you want to wake up in the morning and get excited.” Purpose, he says, changes with life. “As long as you are connected to touch, sense, feel, relationships, life, wellness integrates all of these.”

Ridhira Group expresses this through what they call the eight dimensions of wellness: physical, financial, environmental, emotional and more. “The most important thing we aspire to,” he says, “is to have a sense of balance.”

Balance also includes the environment. Sustainability, to him, is dharma. Their first community is designed as a fully 3D printed project with reduced material waste and locally sourced elements, shaped through tropical architectural principles. “Hyderabad has great weather for ten months,” he says. “We design with open light, open door, outdoor indoor spaces. When you are part of nature, the way you think, act and behave is very different.”

What stands out most is his belief that wellness must feel human. “People want to get treated,” he says, “but it should not feel like a hospital.”

In the end, he returns to purpose and community. “If we can help you achieve balance in each dimension of wellness,” he says, “then as a community, we have done a phenomenal job.”