Apoorva Patni, son of Patni Computers’ co-founder Ashok Patni, is expanding his healthcare venture – Currae – a brand of small uni-speciality hospital chains.

Talking to BusinessLine , Patni said he plans to invest about ₹500 crore by 2020 to set up about 20 hospitals under brand Currae across three major specialties — child and mother care, orthopaedics and ophthalmology. Besides, Patni also plans to invest about ₹100 crore in about 7-12 start-ups in the healthcare space.

“From day one, our idea was to create a national chain but keeping in mind the regional requirements. Hospital business is very regional in nature. We have Apollo in South or a Vedanta in the North, but we don’t have a national chain yet. Our plan to is create one through Currae,” Patni said who believes that smaller hospitals are faster to scale, cost-effective and can turn profitable within a year of operation.

In the past two years, Patni has opened 4 hospitals – two eye-care units in Kolkata, one mother and child centre and one orthopaedic unit in Thane, Maharashtra.

Next round

For the next round of expansion, the company plans to raise the funds through a mix of equity and debt.

The company has already got funding from Patni Computer’s Family Office, which is focussed in investing in start-ups, mostly healthcare.

The Patni family in 2011 had sold their 45.6 per cent stake in Patni Computers, along with the 17 per cent held by private equity firm GeneralAtlantic Partners, to iGate and Apax for over a billion dollars.

Patni also said that their model is different from others as they don’t buy land but lease it for longer term and create cluster of hospitals in a catchment not more than 5 km away from each other.

“We aim to have a cluster (with all three specialties) in every suburb of every metro city or a tier-2 city. We want to be closer to all residential areas,” he said, adding that branding and communication also becomes easier and cheaper.

Patni said that he doesn’t, however, want to get into specialities like cardiac or oncology (cancer) as the dynamics and capes to run such hospitals is different and very high, respectively.

Investment in start-ups

Besides creating a hospital chain, Patni also is investing in healthcare start-ups under the brand Currae. The healthcare sector has a huge potential and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 16 per cent till 2020, Patni said quoting an industry report.

Currae Healthtech Fund has already invested in about 13 start-ups till now.

Patni said the idea to invest in start-ups is also to get technology related assistance to the Currae hospitals and also allow those start-ups to start pilot projects and get access to the hospitals, doctors and staff, get genuine feedback and also leverage domain expertise for faster growth.

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