To cater to the growing need of medical infrastructure in the country, Apollo Hospitals is looking at adding 3,000 more beds in India in next three years at an investment of around ₹6,000 crore.
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Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Joint Managing Director Sangita Reddy, in an exclusive interview with CNBC TV18, shared the group’s plans, the new initiatives to adapt AI and technology to provide better treatment to the patients, and much more.
Below are the edited excerpts of the interview:
Q. Apollo hospitals is looking at a lot of expansion. Can you shed some light on the current portfolio and your expansion plans, especially with the new financial year about to start?
A: I think the realm of healthcare is expanding. We will definitely be adding new beds. Approximately 3,000 new beds will be coming up across Apollo in the next three years.
Also, our pharmacy chain continues to grow. Our clinic chain is growing. We’re looking at proactive, predictive and preventive healthcare.
Our health checkup programmes are enhancing continuously. We’re also working in research so that we can use the data that we have; build artificial intelligence models; and do technology tie-ups. We are becoming not just a seeker or a user, but also a provider of technology.
Our AI health risk models are being used by other organisations, international bodies and even other governments.
Q. As you said, 3,000 beds will be added. What sort of investment are you looking at?
A: This is something that we will bring out. Each bed these days ranges between ₹1.5-2 crore approximately.
Q. Where you will be building these new hospitals?
A: We definitely have something coming up in Mumbai. Gurgaon will be opening soon. Hyderabad has one. Chennai has a large facility coming up and Bengaluru is the next one.
Q. Are you considering any expansion in tier-II and new upcoming areas? We recently saw Medanta announcing new hospitals in Lucknow, for example.
A: In Lucknow, we already have a wonderful facility and we have always been in tier-II. We’ve also gone to tier-III.
If you go from Karimnagar to Kakinada to Karikudi to Vijaywada to Vishakapatnam, all these are cities have our facilities because we’ve always tried to bring healthcare within everyone’s reach.
Our telemedicine network also touches nearly the whole country.
Our app, Apollo 24×7, serves over 10,000 pin codes. This is a significant initiative on the touch of a button that we have continued to develop. You can tele-consult with anyone of our 4,000-5,000 doctors.
Q. You also spoke about your pharmacy chain expanding. But, from the numbers, it looks like there’s a long way to go for the pharmacy business to break even…
A: Actually, last quarter, we were not just break-even, in fact, we were mildly positive in the pharmacy division.
Q. What about your testing side, because the radiology division is doing a lot of healthy numbers? Are we looking at any expansion on that side?
A: I think in every area it’s a calibrated, integrated approach to bring an ecosystem of care like we spoke of at the conference.
When we give an ecosystem of care, we are building hospitals of the future which are integrated with technology, which think proactively about preventive care, which enhance primary care and then lead up into tertiary care, wherever needed.
We offer tertiary care on the best results and the best outcomes on power, the best in the world at one-tenth of global prices.
Q. Talking about medical tourism, please give us an idea about your international patient numbers?
A: Our international patient volume has continued to grow. Of course, Bangladesh had a bit of a setback, but the rest of the market is continuing to grow.
