BENGALURU, July 5 -- Somewhere in one of Manipal's 49 hospitals right now, a patient is being wheeled into an operating theater with no idea that the value of the bed they are lying in is about to become a subject of public debate. By the end of July, if the timeline holds, it will be.

Manipal Health Enterprises has received approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India to proceed with an initial public offering targeting roughly Rs 8,000 crore, about $1 billion, through a combination of fresh shares and an offer for sale from existing investors including Temasek, the Singaporean state investment firm that has backed the chain for years. The company is targeting a valuation between $10 billion and $13 billion, a range that wil...