Eye Q to expand in tier two towns

Eye Q Super Speciality Eye Hospitals plans to have 35 eye hospitals by September 2013

Eye Q Super Speciality Eye Hospitals, a chain of eye care centres with 15 hospitals plans to have 35 eye hospitals by September 2013.

 

The eye care chain is consolidating in the tier two towns across India and has plans to go  live with six more full fledged eye care centres in cities like Meerut, Kanpur, Lucknow, Ranikhet, Jhansi and Baroda in the forthcoming months.

 

The growing health concerns in the hinterland of India coupled with the better affordability provides ample scope for the healcare players to penetrate into small towns. The huge footfall  in smaller towns at a cost advantage as the land cost and rentals are quite low as compared to metros, said Rajat Goel, Co-Founder and CEO of the Eye Q Super Speciality Eye Hospitals.

 

The healthcare chain started six years ago as a start-up venture and triggered a massive expansion in the last two and a half years after having an access to the PE funds.

 

Eye Q has a plan to have 100 such centres in the small towns of India at an investment of Rs 250 cr and Rs 60 cr has already been routed through PE route.

 

Goel told that a funding of $2 million from Song Advisors in year 2010 and that of $10 million from Helion and Nexus helped the company to grow from 6 hospitals to 15 in a short span of two years and encouraged by the success of the business model, the company has set a target of having 100 eye hospitals in the country by the year 2015. 

"Our hub and spoke model allows us to attach one super speciality hospital to a few others in neighboring places so that everyone can get access to them.

 

It’s a choice we made – we could have either opted for a big hospital attracting patients within a 200-250 km radius, or we could have provided those facilities at the place where the patients are. We choose the later and moved our machines and experts.

 

"In our hub-and-spoke model, we have 7-8 hospitals in the span of around 50 km each and these hospitals will be serviced by those machines which we have more or less made portable or fixed in a place so that people can move around and experts control all these hospitals through the doctors there as well as their own personal visits. This way, we are able to leverage both the doctors as well as their equipment. This helps us keep the costs low for patients, and allows us to price our services appropriately", said Goel.

 

"The initial years were challenging and we started with internal accurals as banks did not lend without collatral. After the private equity partners set in, the business really picked up momentum. Not only capital, PE helped us in drawing good quality talent, cross learning with companies and strong board governance."

 

For the remaining 65 hospitals proposed till 2015, a mix of debt and equity would be prefered. 

 

Since the market behaviour is volatile, bank borrowings and PE fund would be prefered for proposed expansion, he informed.