Also, takes over hotel for Rs 35 cr, converts to hospital
HealthCare Global (HCG), which claims to be South Asia’s biggest cancer care hospital chain, has firmed up plans for a Rs 150 crore hospital of around 400 beds in the healthcity planned by the state government near the Bangalore International Airport.
The hospital will have high-end technology for treatment and care of paediatric cancer, bone marrow, leukaemia among others. The chain has been allotted six acres by the state government at the healthcity proposed by the Karnataka government at the Global Investors’ Meet to be set up under the public-private partnership (PPP) model.
HealthCare Global Enterprises (HCG), one of the leaders in healthcare industry, signed an MoU with the Government of Karnataka to set up a cancer treatment and research centre at Devanahalli and the government has agreed to facilitate the investment after signing the MoU.
HCG aims to set up 30-35 cancer care centres in the next 3-4 years. Many of these centres will be in tier II and tier III cities.
In these smaller cities, while the real estate / building costs are about 20 per cent lower, this advantage is offset by the manpower costs. Salaries are the only enticements to get people to work in the smaller cities, said Dr B S Ajaikumar, Chairman and CEO, HCG Enterprises Ltd.
Besides, HCG has taken a hotel adjacent to HCG’s on a long term lease for Rs 35 crore. It has set up a 90-bed hospital, and also a second imaging unit there. The hospital has 350 oncologists on board.
HCG has 350 oncologists associated with it. In three to fours years it aims to go in for an IPO, and will eventually make investments of Rs 800-1,000 crore. The chain has till now seen investment of Rs 400-450 crore with about Rs 250 crore coming from four private equity firms.
HCG has so far received equity funding from PremjiInvest of around Rs 40 crore, from IDFC of Rs 55 crore and from Evolvence, Rs 25 crore. It had got Rs 31.2 crore from Milestone Religare Investment Advisors Ltd. The rest of the funds have been raised as debt.
On the land allotment, Dr B S Ajaikumar said, “We are yet to see the land and we don’t know the location of the land."
HCG had unveiled the PET Myocardial Blood Flow (MBF) System that offers clinicians a non-invasive method to determine true myocardial blood flow and accurately assess the need for revascularisation procedures such as stenting and bypass surgery.
For the oncology major, the commissioning of MBF opens an exciting new dimension in quantitative metabolic imaging and also marks its foray into cardiology diagnosis. The MBF provides an absolute measure for blood flow in the myocardium to assess minutest of problems that hitherto remained undetected with conventional imaging techniques.