GE Healthcare, the $18-billion healthcare business of American conglomerate General Electric Company, expects its revenues from India to touch $1 billion, from the current $570 million, in three to four years, according to Ashutosh Banerjee, director (life care solutions -- South Asia).
“We are targeting a year-on-year growth of 15-20 per cent in India. And, this growth will be primarily driven by our plans of rolling out 100 new products to address the unmet healthcare needs in India over the next two to three years,” he told Business Standard.
GE Healthcare, which launches around 10 products every year in the Indian market, plans to roll out the new products in categories like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), cath labs, anaesthesia, respiratory, cardiology, patient-monitoring life sciences and medical diagnostics equipment. Thus far, it has launched 25 products, across categories, in the domestic market.
The company has its research and development centre – GE John F Welch Technology Centre – in Bangalore, with an employee base of over 4,500. Of these, 1,600 are engineers with 60 per cent of them having advanced degrees and 10 per cent having global experience.
The Bangalore campus, set up on 50 acre with an investment of $200 million, has one million sft of labs and offices. Overall, the company has so far invested $700 million in India.
“We never get restricted by capacities. We will be bringing to India some platforms (labs) for developing imaging equipment in the next year or so, which calls for hiring more resources,” Banerjee said, while declining to comment further. On the integration of GE Healthcare’s existing and standalone business units and manufacturing plants in India under Wipro GE Healthcare, a joint venture entity, he said the process was on. “There are some legal formalities ... we are almost in the final stages of wrapping up that integration.”
<b>Eyes 10% of Indian warmers’ market</b>
Announcing the global launch of GE Healthcare’s new suite of thermoregulation (warmer) devices here today, Banerjee said that the new range would be 20-40 per cent cheaper than its predecessor, Lullaby Warmer, which it sold for Rs 1.35 lakh a piece.
“Anywhere between 12,000 and 15,000 warmers are being sold in the Indian market every year. Of this, 10 per cent market share is what we are looking at,” he said, adding that the new range would be manufactured completely at its three facilities (with a capacity of 5,000 units per year) in Bangalore, and would be made available in India, Latin America and Africa from January-end.
Stating that India contributed to 23 per cent of child mortality and 19 per cent of maternal mortality on the planet, Banerjee said India had over 10,000 community healthcare centres that needed to be equipped with such warmers.
“Our idea is to upgrade ‘light bulb holders’ to these new devices. We plan to work with governments through a public-private-partnership model, and NGOs and institutions to address maternal infant mortality,” he said,adding that the company was talking to various state governments in India and was expecting a breakthrough soon.
Meanwhile, Terri Bresenham, president and chief executive of GE Healthcare, India and South Asia, inaugurated Discovery CT750 HD, the world’s first high-definition CT (computed tomography) with less dose, at Continental Hospitals in Hyderabad on Friday. “The dual-energy CT with cardiac spectral imaging at Continental Hospitals answers questions previously left unanswered,” she said.
