Dr Batra's bullish on personal care, overseas biz to drive growth

Plans to take franchisee route to expand clinics in India

India's leading homeopathic clinic chain Dr. Batra's, is now bullish on its personal care products space apart from cosmetic surgery clinics and overseas expansion to drive its future growth.

While its core business of homeoapthy constitutes nealry 90 per cent of the turnover now, Dr. Batra's expects that by end of 2014, it would come down to 75 per cent, while new verticals like personal care products, cosmetic surgery clinics and international clinics will contribute around 25 per cent of the turnover.

While the homeopathy business is growing at 13 per cent at the moment, the group's Dubai operations (where it operates a clinic) is growing at 67 per cent, while cosmetic surgery clinics business is more than doubling every year and the products vertical is growing at 44 per cent.

The Group's turnover in 2012-13 was Rs 133 crore, and it is targeting Rs 200 crore turnover by the end of this fiscal.

With 114 clinics in India and one each in Dubai and London, Dr. Batra's is preparing to launch 10 more clinics in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and 10 in the United Kingdom (UK) over the next couple of years. Mukesh Batra, founder chairman and managing director of Dr. Batra's clinics said, "Right now we do not have franchisee clinics, all are company owned and operated. However, in the future, we might have to look for local partners for our international expansion."

Back home in India too, Dr. Batra's is looking at the franchisee route to expand in smaller cities. As for Gujarat, Batra informed that it is looking at opening new clinics in Rajkot, Gandhinagar, Bhavnagar, Junagadh, Vapi, Gandhidham in the next few months.

"The Gujarat market is growing very steadily for us. We have already treated over 97,000 patients here in the last decade. From a Rs 4 crore turnover in the state in 2009-10, it has grown to Rs 8.7 crore in 2012-13."

Dr. Batra's has also opened one cosmetic surgery clinic in Ahmedabad, and with the buoyant non-resident Indian population in the state, it hopes that aesthetic solutions and cosmetic surgery would find many takers here. "Procedures like simple hair transplant cost around one-tenth of what it costs in the US and UK, and hence it is likely to be popular amongst the NRI population," Batra said.

As for the personal care products vertical, Batra informed, "We are now trying to make our products available through modern trade and have already tied up with Big Bazaar for the same. We do not wish to take the pharmacy route." It now has a plant in Palgadh in Maharashtra for manufacturing its personal care products.