Calcutta appears to be emerging as the new battleground for big national hospital chains.
A week after India’s second largest hospital group, Manipal, consolidated its presence in the city by acquiring a majority stake in AMRI Hospitals, the country’s largest hospital chain, Apollo Hospitals, has expanded its presence in Calcutta by acquiring an under-construction healthcare facility in Sonarpur.
Apollo Multispeciality Hospitals Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the flagship Apollo Hospitals Enterprise, purchased the asset, which includes a building with a built-up area of 174,000sq ft on a 1.4-acre plot, from Future Oncology Hospital & Research Centre for Rs 102 crore.
When Apollo completes the partially built hospital, the hospital chain will have 325 more beds in Calcutta. Apollo Multispeciality Hospitals, on EM Bypass near Salt Lake, has around 750 beds.
The first phase of the Sonarpur facility, with 225 beds, will become functional in the next 12 months and offer Apollo’s high-end specialities, including comprehensive oncology services with radiotherapy, the healthcare chain said in a statement.
Commenting further on the development, Suneeta Reddy, managing director, Apollo, said: “The addition of this new facility is part of our planned capacity expansion across the country and will allow us to serve even more people in the region.”
The acquisition was carried out from the internal generation of Apollo Multispeciality Hospitals Ltd (AMSHL), which owns the hospital in Calcutta. For the year ended March 31, 2023, AMSHL recorded an income of Rs 1,005.04 crore and a net profit of Rs 105.99 crore.
Mousumi Ghosh, founder of Future Trust, from which Apollo bought the Sonarpur property, said the hospital was about 75 per cent complete but they decided to exit the healthcare space after Covid.
“We want to focus on our core area, education. Who is better than Apollo to take the hospital project forward? I am confident that they would do a good job and bring quality healthcare to a vast populace of south Calcutta and beyond,” Ghosh told Metro on Wednesday evening.
The hospital on the southern extension of EM Bypass would be Apollo’s second hospital in Calcutta and the deal comes a week after Temasek-backed Manipal Hospitals concluded its acquisition of four hospitals of AMRI, including three in Calcutta, from the Emami Group.
Temasek, a sovereign wealth fund owned by the government of Singapore, directly and indirectly, via Manipal, has shares in five superspeciality hospitals in Calcutta, including Medica and Columbia Asia, which has been rebranded as Manipal.
The Ranjan Pai family-promoted hospital chain is expected to rebrand AMRI as Manipal, too.
The Reddy family-promoted Apollo said the Sonarpur facility is going to further strengthen the chain’s dominant position as the largest healthcare provider in the east with over 1,800 beds across Calcutta, Bhubaneswar and Guwahati.
The acquisition marks an important step in Apollo’s strategy to expand in key regions through brownfield and greenfield projects. Apollo will further augment its capacity in the east by an addition of 700 beds over the next three years, taking its bed count in the eastern region to 2,500, the company’s statement said.