 "Aster DM Healthcare to expand in India with Rs 900 cr capex over next 3 yrs")
Aster DM Healthcare is planning around Rs 900 crore capital expenditure over the next three years to expand presence in India, as it looks at increasing the share of revenue from the country to around 40 per cent of the total by 2025, a top company official said.
The company had last week posted an over three-fold jump in consolidated net profit at Rs 127.62 crore for the quarter ended September 2021. Revenue from operations stood at Rs 2,504.34 crore during the period.
"For the last few quarters, or even since the last one year, we have been very aggressively looking at India, so we know that India is a market with huge potential which has got significant demand and supply gap...so it makes very easy to take that decision to look at India as the long term growth market for us," Aster DM Healthcare Founder Chairman and MD Azad Moopen told PTI.
The company has been doing business in India but it wants to increase the pace of growth here, he added.
"Presently, about 25 per cent of our revenues are coming from India, we want to take it to 40 per cent or even more than that, and that is the plan we have. We hope that we will be able to reach this 40 per cent by 2025," Moopen said.
This target can be achieved earlier, say in three years, if the company is able to do some acquisitions in India, which is also being looked at if there is an appropriate opportunity, he said.
On the capex, Moopen said, "We are looking at a capex of Rs 580 crore for the group for the next at least three years,... anywhere around Rs 280 to 300 crore per year we are looking only for India...so if I take Rs 300 crore for three years it's almost close to 900 crore."
Asked how the company plans to fund the growth plans, including acquisitions if any in India, Moopen said, "it would be a mix of internal accruals and debt."
For the growth in India, Aster DM Healthcare is focusing on the hospital sector, and for this, the company is looking at metros, tier I, tier II and tier III cities. For tier II and III cities, the asset light model is being considered, and we would like to partner with the hospitals which are already existing, he added.
The other segments for growth in India would be expansion of the company's lab network and franchised pharmacies across India, Moopen said.
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"Virtual care which is one area where we are significantly investing, so the virtual care and telemedicine, also will be rolled out across India. So in all these three areas the expansion will be pan- India, whereas when it comes to hospitals it will be more south focused," he added.
Speaking on the vision behind Aster DM Healthcare, Moopen said, it is actually a passion to provide good healthcare to the people that the company is taking care of.
"We always have thought that profit has to be a byproduct in healthcare. .. We always thought that healthcare is actually a little different from the usual businesses, and we are to be taking care of people that must be the primary focus, in that we may also make some money, it's not that you are fully focused just to make money," he added.