Bangalore's newly re-branded boutique birthing centre, Cloudnine, will start new centres in eight cities and has lined up a Rs 100-crore finance for its expansion, its promoters said on Wednesday.
The expansion was planned over two years, said Dr Kishore Kumar, Managing Director and CEO, at the launch of the new brand on Wednesday.
The promoters were close to roping in a private equity player who could not be named yet, said Mr Rohit M.A., Director. The team would explore options such as few ‘brownfields' or acquisitions of existing maternity centres and re-branding them as Cloudnine, he told
The team led by Dr Kumar, a neonatalogist, was until recently running their 35-bed Bangalore facility under licence from Apollo Lifestyle's birthing brand, The Cradle. It would now be called Cloudnine after ending the royalty-based arrangement of four years with Apollo, they said.
Dr Kumar said the name was chosen because people said they were on Cloud Nine after having their babies in the centre. “With demand for quality care growing, Cloudnine would be setting up two new centres in Bangalore by October 2011. In two years, Cloudnine will mark its presence in Mysore, Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Kochi and Kozhikode.”
Mr Rohit said the centre conducted around 220 deliveries a month and expected to take around 5 per cent of the city's birthing market share in a couple of years; Bangalore recorded 400 deliveries a day in 2006. Cloudnine would fill the niche between private nursing homes and corporate hospitals while offering exclusive personalised services to expectant women. So far, it had conducted 6,000 deliveries and 3,000 gynaecological surgeries.