Apollo Hospitals mulls setting up Proton Cancer Centre in Mumbai and Delhi

Apollo Hospitals is exploring the possibility of setting up Apollo Proton Cancer Centres (APCC) in Mumbai and Delhi. The company has already set up one such facility at Chennai at an investment of around Rs 1,300 crore, and may be looking at roping investors to fund future projects.

On Friday, Apollo announced that it has received Joint Commission International (JCI) accreditation for its advanced Proton Therapy Centre in Chennai.

Speaking to reporters, Pratap C Reddy, chairman, Apollo Hospitals Group said the chain is the only one in South Asia and the Middle East to have such a Centre and to receive accreditation from JCI, the recognised global leader in health care accreditation. 

"It is high time we had more and more dedicated cancer cure centres in India, as the number of affected people is increasing every year. There are 1.68 million people in India being diagnosed annually and the number is growing."

The Chennai centre has treated around 200 cases over the past one year since inception including those from other states and abroad. 

"Given the rising number of cancer cases, we may look at setting up such an advanced Proton Therapy Centre in places like Mumbai and Delhi," Reddy said.

A Krishnan, chief financial officer,  Apollo Hospitals said at an investors' call that the plans are to transfer the entire Capex already incurred for the project into a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), and to strike a 50:50  equity partnership between two parties.

"So we are talking of a business transfer agreement, which should take the whole Proton project, move the Proton project completely out of the Apollo book into the other book. And we are talking of an equity infusion of at least Rs 350 crore," he told analysts .

The third gantry has still not been capitalised and around Rs 200 crore of balance capex capitalisation is yet to be achieved. This is part of the capital work-in-progress and has already been incurred, he added. The total capex for the Proton Therapy Centre for all the three gantries is around Rs 1,000 crore.

The Proton business was close to breakeven in the third quarter of financial year 2019-20, with almost 20 patients a month, which shows that it is a high-Ebitda business, the management said during the call.