Apollo Life to expand operations

Apollo Life, an initiative of the Apollo Hospitals group, is planning to expand its operations and reach one million people through its preventive approach by 2014.

“Our aim is to touch one million lives by 2014 and make the preventive approach more pro-active,” Yogesh Sethi, chief executive officer, Apollo Life, said.

It would launch technology-based platforms by next month. “Currently, these are at the test-marketing stage. One of them would be a mobile-based platform for those who do not have access to Internet,” he added.

A recent study done by Nimhans (National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences) points out that around 50 per cent of the employees in India Inc are under stress, 20 per cent suffer from depression and 30 per cent have problems such as addictions and marital discord.

Quoting a recent survey report, he said, “India is expected to have the largest cardiovascular disease burden in the world by 2020 between the age group of 30 and 69 years, reflecting its loss in terms of losing potentially productive years.”

He said they were addressing these issues by conducting programmes, including health assessments, lifestyle counselling and seminars through partnering with corporate houses.

Apollo Life has partnered with more than 581 corporate houses including HSBC, Tata, PepsiCo, Tech Mahindra and L&T, covering 2,29,000 employees across 32 cities, through its specially-designed foodie-junkie programme, be aware programme and executive health connect, etc.

Born as a concept in 2004 from the vision of group chairman Prathap Reddy, it has now become a full-fledged entity and is headed by chairman’s granddaughter Upasna Kamineni, he said. Its objective is to promote well-being and a disease-free life.

Apollo Life is planning to open 5-7 wellness centres by next year from the current two. It has also launched Apollo Mindline, a tele-counselling helpline to address an array of psychological issues. It currently has 100 full-time professionals and is supported by 600 doctors.