By IANS,
Chennai : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will Friday flag off the city-based Apollo Hospital’s programme to set up 25 new hospitals in rural and semi-urban areas over next two years, a top company official said here Tuesday.
The project will involve an outlay of Rs.10 billion ($232.5 million), with each hospital costing around Rs.400 million,” Apollo executive chairman Pratap C. Reddy told reporters.
The project will be implemented through a 100 percent subsidiary, Apollo Reach Hospitals.
“Each hospital will have around 100 beds and can be expanded to 200 beds. The land requirement will be around two acres per hospital,” Pratap Reddy said.
Asked about the funding of the project, Apollo president K. Padmanabhan said: “It will be a mix of equity, internal accruals and debt.”
He said the company would take loan from an overseas institution at a coupon rate less than 10 percent. The currency risk will be fully hedged.
Apollo executive director-finance Suneeta Reddy said the parent company has free cash of around Rs.1.5 billion and promoters would infuse additional funds.
Meanwhile, the company said it has plans to enter medical education sector by setting up a medical college.
“We are considering four places – Madurai (Tamil Nadu), Chittoor (Andhra Pradesh), Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Patna – to locate the 100 student medical college,” Pratap Reddy said.
The project would need around Rs.1 billion investment, he said.
Apollo Reach Hospitals would focus on tertiary care services including cardiology, cardiothoracic surgeries, neurology, nephrology and orthopedics.
The group has already procured land in Andhra Pradesh (Karim Nagar, Nellore, Chittoor, Vishakapatnam), Tamil Nadu (Karaikudi, Tiruchirapalli, Karur, Chennai), Orissa (Bhubaneshwar), Bihar (Patna) and in Maharashtra (Nashik).