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Apollo Clinics, which offers under one roof the services of physicians, diagnostics, patient-care, and pharmacy, will touch the 100 number mark by March 2018 from 78 now, according to Neeraj Garg, Chief Executive Officer, Apollo Health and Lifestyle Ltd (AHLL).
Talking to BusinessLine at the launch of the 78th multi-speciality clinic at Uppal here on Friday, Garg said the expansion will be into towns spread across the country. At present, the clinics are in 31 cities and towns. “We are in all States except J&K and Himachal Pradesh. Our presence is most in Bengaluru (11), followed by Hyderabad (8), Chennai (6) and Pune (4),” he said.
Half of the total clinics are company owned. The way forward is to pursue a mix of own and franchisee model. In Hyderabad, all units are company owned. The franchisee is chosen on the basis of the long-term interest in healthcare. Overall, the typical clinic will be largely a “cut-copy-paste’ model, easy to replicate with standards laid down by Apollo, Garg claimed.
The investment into each clinic, which aims to be a family-care centre, will be ₹2-2.5 crore. A subsidiary of Apollo Hospitals Enterprises, AHLL had attracted a ₹450-crore equity investment last year, part of which it will use for expansion of the format.
Primary care formats Neeraj said AHLL is into six primary-care formats that include Clinics, Sugar, Diagnostics, Cradle, White (Dentistry) and Spectra (surgical). It is expanding into Dialysis and Fertility.
Though the first clinic was launched in 2002, the push has come in the last couple of years. “We expect the format to take off once outpatient insurance starts growing in the country. At present Apollo Munich, Star Health Insurance among others offer this”, he said. In diagnostics, the strength is 40 own laboratories in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. There are also 185 collection centres.
The Telangana Home Minister, Naini Narasimha Reddy, launched the Uppal Clinic.
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