Dr Agarwal's Eye Hospitals to invest Rs 600 crore

Eye care chain to raise money from PEs

BSE-listed Dr Agarwal's Eye Hospitals, one of India's leading eye care chains, is planning to invest around Rs 600 crore to achieve its Vision 2020. The Chennai-based group said it is planning to raise money from private equity investors to support the investment.

"We would like to be a pan-India player by 2020 with a turnover of around Rs 1,000 crore," said Dr Amar Agarwal, chairman and managing director, Dr Agarwal's Eye Hospitals.

The Group has set a target to close the current fiscal with a revenue of around Rs 400 crore and in 2016-17 it is looking at around Rs 500 crore and by 2020 it would like to see the revenue at around Rs 1,000 crore.

Currently the hospital chain has around 60 eye hospitals, including 14 in Africa, 1 in Cambodia, one in Mauritius and the target is to take it to 200 hospitals by 2020.

In India majority of the hospitals are located in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telegana and Andhra Pradesh. The company is now entering into Kerala by opening three hospitals.

The hospital chain, which recently entered into Eastern market by opening on hospital at Kolkata is also looking at Gujarat, Maharastra and other Northern states.

"Our strategy will be both organic and inorganic," said Agarwal, adding that the company would look at raising money from Private Equity funds to support the investment plans. He did not disclose the quantum.

Dr Agarwal's is planning to invest around Rs 600 crore till 2018. The company which has around Rs 25 crore debt said that other mode of funding would be debt and internal accurals.

The company adopts by hub and spoke model to cater to the patients.

Agarwal claims that on an average foot fall across the hospitals is around 10,000 and similar number of surgeries are being carried out.

One of the major strength of Dr Agarwal's, according to him, is innovation. The company which claims it was the first one to adopt Pdek, Glued Eye Well when it comes to eye care.