‘Ego, not need, drives many branding decisions'

Shivinder Mohan Singh, 36, Managing Director, Fortis Healthcare, rarely hesitates to call a spade a spade. Whether he is speaking at healthcare conferences or giving interviews, he speaks his mind — much to the consternation of his public relations head, who gives him all kinds of warning looks, which he resolutely ignores.

Post Ranbaxy sell-out, Singh's attention has been devoted to growing the Fortis brand. India's largest corporate hospital chain, with a network of 66 hospitals, has been in acquisition mode of late. “We could soon set a world record in acquisitions,” as Shivinder himself puts it, which poses its own set of challenges in brand integration. Plans are also afoot to build a second brand — cheaper, ‘budget' hospitals that would cater to tier-III and tier-IV cities. And, to compound the problem, the group seems to have created a huge number of sub-brands within the healthcare portfolio, such as La Femme (for women). How does it manage it all?

Here's what the outspoken MD has to say.

On the need for different brands within the same healthcare portfolio:

I see no reason why we should not have brands cut this way and cut that way. What I mean is cut into price segments — like the Taj has done with Vivanta and Ginger in the hotel industry. And also cut for different verticals — separate brands for hospitals, for diagnostics, and so on.

The only issue is that the more the brands, the more complexity it creates in managing the business. It also creates silos for the operating environment, which is why I am not really for cutting slices of everything. But where there is a felt, market-based need, there should be separate brands.

For instance, we are setting up free-standing dialysis centres. Now, that will be a separate market segment, a different mindset, so it needs a separate brand. When you go to our dialysis centres, I want you to think retail, I want you to think convenience, good quality, good turnaround.

I don't think Fortis stands for those attributes. Fortis stands for institutional — great quality, institute of excellence and so on — so keeping the Fortis name would only be confusing the customer.

Similarly, we have set up a diabetes network which is called Fortis CDOC — that again is a separate brand. Where there is a consumer need to be clear about what he or she is going for, it needs to be different.

Similarly, SRL, our diagnostics company, is a separate brand.

On post-acquisition brand behaviour

Once an acquisition is done, there are two populations that we have to worry about when making the switch — like in the case of Wockhardt. One is the patient, who has an association and affiliation with the brand. He wouldn't like to say, “I had a bypass from that hospital that used to be Wockhardt and is called Fortis.” The patient community is a significant population.

The other community — even more entrenched and intertwined with the brand — is the employee who has a more emotive connect.

How one manages the aspirations and feelings of both populations:

Which is why, wherever we have made hospital acquisitions that have a certain brand familiarity with the market, we have chosen to retain the brand. There is no reason to change that. Malar has been around for more than 15 years.

It recently became the southernmost point on the Fortis India map — till then it was Raipur in Chhattisgarh. From there we dropped straight to Chennai, that was about three years ago.

And, everybody knew Malar, so it was important to keep that name, for the sake of patients and employees.

In the case of Wockhardt, we had no choice, really. Because Wockhardt was going to retain the pharma company. So we were told to transition within nine months. But we said if we have to do the transition anyway, why wait for nine months, so we took just 90 days.

We don't really have a rule book for these things, every time we buy a hospital, we do it on a case-by-case basis. Unlike many other companies, we don't even have an acquisition rule book.

On why the look and feel are not the same:

If you look at any greenfield venture that Fortis has made or remade, we have left our chaap (stamp) on it. The Fortis chaap .

But it's a common-sense approach we follow, really. I can make every facility I buy look like a Fortis. But it will make me spend a couple of crores. For whom? For my ego?

A lot of brands are more ego than anything else.

If you look at the pharma space, where there have been acquisitions around the world ... You buy hugely successful brands, you pay premium money, and then rip up the name. Why would you want to lose the brand equity? You want to milk it.

I think Daiichi-Sankyo is phenomenally smart. Ranbaxy has enormous brand equity, and they have chosen to stick to it.

People have asked me for five years, why haven't you changed the name of Escorts. To that I respond, I think I should change Fortis to Escorts. I have paid serious money for the brand value. I would be stupid to change that.

Therefore, I think, a lot of brand decisions are made by ego — they are not made by what is good for the organisation.

We don't have any such hang-ups. If there are 32 hospitals and 31 names, we have no problems with that.

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