Moopen to invest Rs 800 crore in healthcare over 5 years

Looks at 10 hospitals in five years, besides several centres providing free services.

The Dubai-based Dr Moopen (DM) Group of hospitals plans to invest Rs 800 crore in India over the next five years to expand operations.

“Profit is not the main goal. It is an emotional decision to increase my presence at home,” Azad Moopen, chairman, told Business Standard at the sidelines of the Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas organised by the Ministry of Overseas Affairs.

Moopen’s aim, he says, is to provide affordable healthcare to the masses, while providing a platform to medical personel to work in an ethical manner.

He has already set up two hospitals in India, both in his home state of Kerala. His group also has a chain of neighbourhood clinics and medical hospitals in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.

Moopen, who says he believes healthcare is philanthropy, said he had no plans to exit from GCC. He said he wants to have at least another 10 hospitals in the coming five years in India, besides several centres providing free dialysis and healthcare services under corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes of the group.

He has also acquired stakes in some existing hospitals in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, and is tying up deals with hospitals in Bangalore, Pune and in Kerala.

The group has also rolled out a series of CSR projects to provide health care to poorer sections. The group has adopted a panchayat in Vazhayoor in Malappuram district of Kerala, where it is paying the premium of 7,000 villagers for a health insurance cover that gives them free healthcare anywhere they want, including at a clinic run by the DM Group in the village itself.

Moopen has also started setting up a series of dialysis centres. “A single dialysis costs Rs 1,000. If a patient were to get three of them a week, that is a sure way to get poor,” he says. A third of the patients pay and the others are subsidised by the former.

The DM Group is also offering 60 heart surgeries free of cost to children every year at the MIMS hospital the group runs in Calicut.

Says Moopen: The government should go beyond providing a measly Rs 30,000 health insurance cover under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana and make it larger, since it is unable to provide quality health care in its own facilities.

He also believes that a partnership with the private sector could be an option for the government to look at in order to run its health care centres. If people are coming to the private sector it is because the public system has failed, he says.