Healthcare chain Apollo Hospitals Enterprise today said it will invest nearly Rs 1,000 crore to set up 12 new hospitals in small towns across the country over the next two years.
"We will be investing up to Rs 1,000 crore to set up 12 'Apollo Reach' hospitals in tier-II and tier-III cities. The investment per hospital will be in the range of Rs 80 to 100 crore," Apollo Hospitals Chairman Prathap C Reddy told reporters here.
Apollo Reach Hospitals is an initiative of the Apollo Hospitals Group to expand its tertiary healthcare business into semi-urban and rural areas.
While construction work has already started on six hospitals, the company is still in the process of finalising sites for six more. It has already shortlisted 14 locations.
The company has started construction work at Trichi, Varanasi, Visakhapatnam, Nashik, Allahabad and suburban Mumbai.
"We have already tied up funds for the first six hospitals. It would be in the form of debt and internal accruals. As we have an excellent debt-equity ratio, funding the next round of investment would not be an issue," Reddy said.
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The 12 new hospitals will also house training institutes for nurses and paramedical staff.
The company also plans to invest Rs 100 crore on setting up another 500 pharmacies across the country over the next fifteen months. At present, it has nearly 1,200 pharmacies in India.
Apollo Hospitals is one of the largest healthcare chains in the country and currently has 9,000 beds available at its hospitals.
The company plans to increase its bed capacity to 12,000 by 2015. It also plans to augment the size of its workforce to 85,000 employees.
Shares of Apollo Hospitals closed at Rs 458.65 on the Bombay Stock Exchange today, down 1 per cent from the previous close.