Vasan Healthcare, which runs eye and dental care hospitals, is looking to raise $115 million to consolidate existing businesses and expand into verticals such as infertility, skincare, urology, orthopaedics and gastro-entrology.

The company is in talks with a few private equity investors and sovereign funds. The transaction will be closed in 8-12 weeks, said Dr A. M. Arun, Chairman, Vasan Healthcare.

Vasan Healthcare has, in the past, received three rounds of funding ($50 million) from Sequoia Capital earlier. Currently, the day-care speciality chain runs 90 eye-care and 12 dental centres, mainly in the South and a few in the North. “By December, the chain will have expanded to 125 eye-care and 25 dental facilities, with a thrust on the North which is a fairly new market for us. From January, we are also looking into diversifying into other ambulatory services such as IVF, dialysis and skincare. We are looking at 10 centres in each vertical to start with,” said Dr Arun.

Vasan Healthcare also plans to come out with an IPO next year. “We will look into this in March,” said Dr Arun.

The group clocked revenues of Rs 500 crore in FY2011. About 80 per cent of the business came from eye-care. It hopes to finish FY2012 with revenues of Rs 800 crore.

The eye-care chain currently has footfalls of 15,000 a day. Around 7,000 people, including 550 doctors, are employed in eye-care. “This could go to 8,000 by December,” said Dr Arun, adding that there is a shortage of trained ophthalmologists in the country. Vasan runs three training centres – Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. It plans to set up one more in the North. There are also plans to set up optical stores.

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