Plan for ₹4 to 12 lakh for a solo GP-style OPD in a tier-2 city and ₹8 to 25 lakh in a metro. Add a procedure room or imaging and you are looking at ₹30 lakh to ₹1 crore. Most of the gap comes down to rent vs buying the space and how many chairs you actually need.
That is a wide range because the question is wide. The numbers online swing between two traps. The first is the Instagram trap, where glossy photos of ₹40-lakh interiors get billed as "the minimum." The second is the hidden-cost trap, where the calculator skips the deposit, the first three months of staff salary, and the consumables. Add those back and a "₹6 lakh" plan quietly turns into a ₹12 lakh first-year bill.
Here is the short version, before we get into the detail:
| Setup type | Tier-2 city | Metro |
|---|---|---|
| Solo GP clinic (rented room) | ₹4 to 8 lakh to open | ₹10 to 20 lakh to open |
| Solo GP clinic (bought space) | ₹15 to 30 lakh | ₹40 to 80 lakh |
| Specialist with procedure room | ₹30 to 60 lakh | ₹60 lakh to ₹1 crore+ |
The rest of this post breaks down where each of those numbers comes from.
Why the numbers online are usually off
Two patterns show up in almost every cost calculator out there.
The Instagram trap. The ₹40-lakh interiors you see on OPD-startup Instagram accounts are real, but they are the top end of what a clinic can look like. Most doctors opening a private practice do not need a marble reception desk. A chair, a desk, an exam couch, and a working sink will do. Most calculators put the Instagram setup in the "minimum" column, which is why the published numbers feel high.
The hidden-cost trap. The published numbers usually skip three things. The deposit on the rental space (6 to 11 months of rent upfront in metros). The first three months of staff salary before patient volume picks up. And the consumables. When you add these back, the "₹6 lakh startup" plan quietly becomes a ₹12 lakh first-year bill.
What you actually want is the realistic number, broken down by category, with the optional items called out as optional.
What the realistic breakdown looks like
The categories below are roughly the same for every solo OPD, no matter the speciality. The number inside each category changes; the categories themselves do not move much.
Space (the biggest line)
If you are renting, expect 2 to 11 months of rent as a security deposit. That is city-dependent: 2 months in smaller cities, 6 to 11 in metros like Mumbai or Bangalore. Plus the first month paid in advance.
A 250 to 400 square foot consultation room in a tier-2 city runs ₹8,000 to ₹20,000 per month. The same room in a metro runs ₹40,000 to ₹1,20,000.
If you are buying the space, add 10 to 15 percent of the property cost for interiors and fit-out on top.
Interiors and fit-out
For a single consultation room, this runs ₹1 to 3 lakh. That covers waiting area seating, your desk, an exam couch, basic lighting, signage, and a sink.
This is where the Instagram upgrade lives. You can spend ₹10 lakh on the same room with imported furniture and feature walls. You can spend ₹60,000 if you keep it plain and clean.
Medical equipment
For a basic GP setup, this is the smallest line. BP apparatus, stethoscope, otoscope, ophthalmoscope, weighing scale, height measure, exam couch, thermometer, glucometer, urine dipsticks. A full set costs ₹25,000 to ₹50,000 new. Much less if you are carrying forward from your training post.
Speciality equipment moves this number fast:
- ENT chair with microscope: ₹3 to 8 lakh extra
- Basic ultrasound: ₹5 to 15 lakh extra
- Portable ECG: ₹15,000 to ₹40,000 extra
Licences and registrations
Small in absolute terms, easy to miss. Trade licence from the municipal body, professional tax, GST (if your turnover will cross ₹20 lakh; most new clinics do not in year one, but registering is cheap), biomedical waste authorisation if you handle sharps, and the state clinical establishment registration.
Plan for ₹10,000 to ₹30,000 plus agent fees.
Tech
This is the line most doctors underestimate. A laptop, a printer (prescription printing is not optional), maybe a tablet for consent forms, broadband, a phone.
Even if you plan to run on paper for the first six months, you need a way to print prescriptions and store records. That means at minimum a laptop and a printer. Plan for ₹40,000 to ₹80,000 for hardware and ₹1,000 to ₹2,000 per month for internet.
Staffing
A receptionist or compounder is full-time from day one if you are not sitting at the front desk yourself. Salary runs ₹8,000 to ₹15,000 per month in smaller cities and ₹15,000 to ₹30,000 in metros.
If you plan to be present every day, you can defer this cost. If you want the clinic to run when you are not there, you cannot.
The first three months of salary is part of the startup cost, not the operating cost, because the patients are not there yet to fund it.
Consumables
Once you are seeing patients, plan for ₹5,000 to ₹10,000 per month. Gloves, sanitiser, cotton, syringes (if you administer injectables), paper rolls for the exam couch, handwash, biohazard bags.
Do not budget less than this. It goes faster than you think.
Contingency
Take the sum of everything above and add 15 to 20 percent. Things go wrong. The landlord wants two more months of deposit. The printer breaks. The inspection comes back with a fix list. The AC stops working in May. A budget without a contingency line is a budget you will rewrite in month two.
How to bring it in on the low end
Most doctors spend too much on the categories that look important from the outside and too little on the ones that are not visible. A few patterns help.
Pick a small room in a medical cluster. A clinic on the second floor of a doctor's building gets footfall from the building. A shop on the main road needs the footfall to come from the street. The former is cheaper and busier. The latter is more expensive and quieter.
Buy used where you can. The Indian market for second-hand clinic equipment is active and the price drop after one year is steep. A one-year-old exam couch sells for half the new price. Buy new on items that touch the patient (BP cuffs, otoscope tips, anything that goes in a body). Buy used for everything else.
Run on paper for the first three to six months if you have to. But do not run on paper forever. The cost of switching to digital records later is real, because you will have a backlog of paper to digitise if you ever want a clean EMR migration. Plan for a switch in month three or four, not month twelve.
Do not hire full-time staff until you see 8 to 10 patients a day. Below that, a part-time helper or a family member at the front desk works. The salary line is the easiest one to flex. Flex it.
Push back on the deposit. Most landlords quote 10 months because most tenants accept 10 months. The actual range in most markets is 3 to 6 months with a proper rental agreement and a local guarantor. Cutting the deposit from 10 months to 4 months saves ₹3 to 6 lakh in a metro. That is the single biggest working-capital lever you have on day one.
The realistic solo GP OPD in a tier-2 city with rented space and plain interiors costs ₹4 to 8 lakh to open and another ₹1.5 to 2 lakh per month to run for the first six months. The realistic solo GP OPD in a metro runs ₹10 to 20 lakh to open and ₹3 to 5 lakh per month. Anything outside these ranges usually means one of the categories above is being underestimated.
Common follow-up questions
How much working capital do I need beyond the setup cost? Six months of operating cost on top of the setup cost is a safe rule. Operating cost means rent, salary, consumables, and your own drawings. If your setup is ₹8 lakh and your operating cost is ₹1.5 lakh per month, you need ₹17 lakh accessible, not ₹8 lakh. The setup is the front-loaded number. The operating cost is the one that quietly runs the show from month one.
Can I start a clinic from home? Yes for consultation-only practices in some states, no in others. Home clinics usually need a separate entrance, a dedicated consultation room, and biomedical waste authorisation. If your work involves procedures or you keep more than two days of patient records on site, the home-clinic path gets messy. It works best for tele-consultation-first doctors who see patients in person once in a while.
How do specialists usually finance the higher-end setup? Two patterns. Start as a GP-style OPD first, build patient volume, then reinvest profits into speciality equipment over 18 to 24 months. Or take a business loan against the equipment itself, which most banks offer at 9 to 12 percent for medical equipment. The loan EMI becomes part of the monthly operating cost, but it lets you open with the full setup on day one.
What about a clinic inside a hospital? The rent is higher (hospitals usually take 25 to 35 percent of revenue instead of a flat rent), but the footfall is built in. The trade is between a lower setup cost (you rent a room, not a whole floor) and a lower per-patient margin (you share revenue). This works well for visiting consultants who see patients 2 to 4 days a week at a hospital and 1 to 2 days at their own clinic.
Is the rent really the biggest variable? Yes, and by a wide margin. A consultation room in Indore at ₹12,000 per month and the same room in Mumbai at ₹80,000 per month gives you the same patient experience, but the Mumbai setup needs ₹6 lakh more working capital before opening. City choice is the single biggest lever you control.
Related reading
- What registrations do I actually need to open a private clinic?: the lean-compliance companion to this post.
- Should I rent or buy the space for my new clinic?: the rent-vs-buy decision tree in detail.
- Do I need an EMR on day one of my private practice?: the digital-records timing question.
- Is starting your own clinic actually worth it in 2026?: the contrarian closer for the cluster.
- FAQ: all questions about starting a private OPD in India: every follow-up question across the cluster in one place.