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Healthcare major, Apollo Hospitals Group has diversified into exclusive diabetes management with a new entity called Apollo Sugar.
The company has struck a partnership with the French multinational, Sanofi to set up facilities across the country to tackle the non-communicable disease. In India, an estimated 65 million people are diabetic and another 77.2 million people diagnosed as being pre-diabetic.
The immediate plan is to establish a network of 50 Apollo Sugar Clinics by January 2015. Sanofi will be an investor and technology partner, said Gagan Bhalla, Chief Executive Officer of Apollo Sugar, which is a subsidiary of Apollo Health and Lifestyle and headquartered in Hyderabad.
"The investment by Sanofi and the partnership contours are going through regulatory approvals and the overall scale of funding by the partners for the growth planned will be clear soon, Bhalla told Business Line, when asked about the financials.
At present, Apollo Sugar formed on September 30, has put in place 25 clinics in the 5 metros—Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Hyderabad. There are three formats—Stand alone, Inside Apollo Hospitals and Clinics.
Each Stand Alone facility will have an Endocrinologist, equipments, diagnostics, dieticians, diabetic nurses and have engagement programmes. It will be linked to a Call Centre and access to visiting specialists in cardio, nephro, ophthalmology etc. The approach will be multi-disciplinary care and an integrated management, he explained.
On the expansion plan, the CEO said by end of 2016, the number would be doubled to 100, further doubled to 200 by 2017 and reach 500 by 2019, when the target is to serve at least a million people suffering from diabetes.
Asked about the competition from Dr Mohan’s, Life Span, DiabetaCare etc., Bhalla claimed that Apollo Sugar offers competitive pricing in management and brings tremendous expertise and resources that can be drawn from its extensive multi-speciality hospital network.
"We are also continuously creating trained manpower in diabetology, nursing etc with the Medvarsity. There is also going to be a tie-up with the reputed Joslin diabetes Centre, Boston for research", he added.
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