The Hindu Business Line : Manipal group plans healthcare retail foray in July

The business will involve an investment of Rs 150 crore over three years and include pharmacy, preventive healthcare (diagnostics), beauty and wellness.

The rollout will start in Bangalore and Ahmedabad and move to 10 outlets by April 2008. Dr Ranjan Pai, CEO, Manipal Education and Medical Group, told newspersons that the group was going it alone in the retail space for now and has put on hold its August 2006 MoU with the Kishore Biyani-promoted Future Group.

"We have decided to part ways for now. We may work out something else with Future later," he said.

The Manipal group is believed to have wanted its stores at the ground level but was not granted this option at the Future group-promoted Big Bazaar, which was the original plan.

Each of the planned outlets will have 70 trained professionals and the huge manpower requirement in the coming years will be filled in partly by Manipal's medical education institutions.

Manipal's boutique-style, doctor-driven products and services will cover seven specialties - paediatrics, women's health, lifestyle problems, nutrition and eye skin and oral care.

It will also cover immunisation, radiology and lab medicine, besides offering insurance products of ICICI Lombard and ICICI Prudential.

Each service would not take longer than 45 minutes under an Xpress concept.

Cure & Care will be an outlet for OTC and prescription products.

There will also be Manipal-branded drugs for which the group plans to set up contract manufacturing tie-ups with a couple of domestic USFDA-approved facilities.

Mr Somnath Das, COO, Manipal Cure and Care, said that wellness, untapped in India, is tipped to be a $1-trillion industry by 2010.

Yoga and ayurveda, home delivery, loyalty bonus, travel and home kits of OTC medicine are also in the pipeline, he added.

The group, with Rs 1300-crore turnover in 2006, expects the retail business to generate Rs 50 crore in the first year with an initial promotional budget of Rs 12 crore.

The outlets, Dr Pai said, are targeted at those who wanted to avoid hospitals and clinics.

"There is a huge space in the wellness, preventive and cosmetic care segments. We plan to integrate our skills in healthcare to ride the wave of retail boom." He added: "We will also look at like-minded people to join us as franchisees in the second or third year."

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