Delhi-based information technology company NIIT Technologies will incubate a healthcare vertical by the end of this year. The division will cater to clients in the healthcare space.
The company is exploring health insurance as an area of interest and plans to offer solutions to both providers and users of healthcare. “Healthcare is an interesting industry and has huge requirements for technology but it is fragmented as of now. We have just started thinking about the area and will evolve a practice by the end of this year,” said Arvind Thakur, CEO, NIIT Technologies.
The company which is already servicing clients in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), travel and retail space, plans to leverage its strength in the insurance vertical and then foray in the healthcare segment and offer health insurance solutions to its clients.
“We want to engage in the main activities and problems of providers like hospitals, doctors and consultants and our teams are engaged in studying the vertical,” added Thakur.
Last year, the company’s business in BFSI together stood at 43 per cent, travel, transportation and logistics at 31 per cent while retail and manufacturing contributed 11 per cent to the total revenues.
Thakur added that the healthcare vertical will also see multi-billion dollar opportunities from the healthcare space in the US, especially the Obama administration’s proposed American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan. The plan, which proposes to create Electronic Health Records for all Americans by 2014 with an investment of $20 billion, can open up new vistas of opportunities for Indian IT services firms.
NIIT Technologies is not striking out the option of acquisitions to enter the healthcare vertical. It has Rs 189.5 crore of cash on the balance sheet that it plans to use fund its inorganic growth plans in the travel and BFSI space and expansions in the Middle East besides using it to enter the healthcare segment.