How Arvind Lal built a single lab into India's most valuable diagnostic services powerhouse

Arvind Lal believes in divine interventions. Maybe because he is spiritual. Or maybe because strange coincides have led him to believe in them. Either way, in mid-October, after spending over 11 days in the hills of Uttarakhand—where he had gone to celebrate Navaratri at an ashram—Lal returned to his hometown of New Delhi, refreshed, rejuvenated and feeling divine.  

 The next day, Uttarakhand was hit by heavy rainfall, leading to floods and landslides, and a death toll of nearly 60. Ranikhet, where Lal was stationed, is still cut off from the rest of the state. “It’s a close call, a divine intervention,” Lal tells Forbes India. “I mean, everybody is seeing what has happened. For somebody who got out of there just 24 hours earlier, after spending 11 days, you can call it a coincidence. But you know.”

Perhaps it is that divine intervention that also brought him into the 2021 Forbes India Rich List, seven decades after his father started a single laboratory testing business in New Delhi. Lal is a newcomer on the list, ranked 87, with an estimated wealth of $2.55 billion.