Free guide & calculator · Finance & operations
What it actually costs to set up and run a de-addiction centre in India — staffing, rent, medicines and compliance — plus a calculator to estimate your own setup cost, monthly running cost and break-even occupancy by state and city tier.
One-time capital expenditure, incurred before your first patient walks in. This is the number most first-time operators underestimate, mainly because CCTV, licensing, and working-capital buffer get left out of the "construction cost" they mentally budget for.
Also budget an initial working-capital buffer — most new centres take 3 to 6 months to reach a stable occupancy, and staff salaries and rent are due from day one regardless of how full you are. The calculator below defaults to a 3-month buffer.
Staffing is almost always the largest line item, typically 55 to 70 percent of monthly spend for a residential centre, because most of it is fixed regardless of occupancy.
| Role | Typical monthly cost (illustrative) | Common staffing ratio |
|---|---|---|
| Psychiatrist (full-time) | Varies sharply by city and experience | 1 per centre once beds justify full-time |
| Psychiatrist (visiting/part-time) | Lower, session or day-rate based | Common for smaller centres under ~20 beds |
| Medical Officer / GP | Mid-range | 1 per centre, residential only |
| Clinical Psychologist | Mid-range | ~1 per 15 patients (J&K's 2026 Rules use this ratio explicitly) |
| Counsellor / Social Worker | Lower-mid range | ~1 per 12 patients |
| Nurse | Lower-mid range | ~1 per 10 patients (named ratio in newer state rules) |
| Support staff / attendants | Lower range | ~1 per 8 patients |
| Cook / kitchen, housekeeping, security, admin | Lower range each | Scales with bed count and whether residential |
Private de-addiction centre fees in India vary hugely by positioning. One real-world example from the Mumbai market: budget, lightly-staffed centres run from roughly Rs 15,000 to Rs 40,000 a month, while better-staffed mid-range and premium centres charge considerably more, often Rs 60,000 to well over Rs 1.5 lakh a month for a fuller clinical and hospitality package.
| Positioning | Typical monthly residential fee | What it usually includes |
|---|---|---|
| Budget | ~Rs 15,000 to 40,000 | Basic ward, minimal staff-to-patient ratio, shared facilities |
| Mid-range | ~Rs 40,000 to 80,000 | Fuller clinical team, better staffing ratios, private/semi-private rooms |
| Premium | ~Rs 80,000 to 2,00,000+ | High staff ratios, private rooms, structured therapy programme, amenities |
Other revenue routes: NAPDDR grant-in-aid, if you run as an NGO-funded IRCA/DDAC rather than a private-pay model, covers up to 90 percent of approved recurring and non-recurring costs (95 percent in the North-East, Sikkim, J&K and Ladakh) against fixed government cost norms, not private-market rates. Corporate EAP contracts, insurance and Ayushman Bharat linkages, and training/certification programmes are smaller but growing revenue lines for established centres.
Pick your state, adjust the assumptions, and see an estimate of setup cost, monthly running cost, and the occupancy you'd need to break even. Nothing you enter here is saved or sent anywhere.
Illustrative only. Salaries, rents and fees vary widely even within the same city, and this calculator does not know your specific location, building quality, or staffing choices. Use it to sanity-check a plan, not to raise capital or sign a lease. Nothing entered here is stored, transmitted, or saved by MindFlow.
Most functioning centres run a flat structure: a supervising psychiatrist (full-time above ~20 beds, visiting below), a medical officer for day-to-day rounds, a small clinical team of psychologists and counsellors, and a nursing/support layer sized to your bed count. Newer state rules (Haryana's Form B, J&K's 2026 Rules) increasingly name specific ratios explicitly.
A clean intake process — initial assessment, informed consent (including for any medication-assisted treatment), admission category documentation (independent vs supported, per MHCA), and a documented treatment plan — is both good clinical practice and exactly what an inspecting authority checks first.
If you dispense controlled substances, a locked, logged stock register and a per-patient dispensing register aren't optional paperwork — they're usually named directly in your licence conditions. See our free NDPS register template for a ready format.
Track every registration's renewal date separately — clinical establishment, SMHA, and any NDPS-linked licence often run on different cycles (annual in most states, but 3-yearly in Delhi and J&K's new licence). A missed renewal is treated the same as never having registered.
A basic internal QA process — checking medication dosages, expiry dates, and storage, plus incident and adverse-event logging — is now an explicit requirement in newer state rules and good practice everywhere else.
A practice management system that keeps your patient registry, dispensing register, and MHCA-required documentation in one place saves real time at renewal and inspection. See how MindFlow handles this →
A few states have regulatory features that directly change your cost structure, not just your paperwork. We've researched these in depth separately:
For the full picture on any other state, see our complete state guides.
Once the centre is open, the real financial work is the month-to-month: occupancy tracking, staff cost against census, medicine stock reconciliation, and renewal deadlines. MindFlow keeps these in one place instead of a spreadsheet and a paper file.
See MindFlow →Free to embed on any clinic, association, or resource website.