Sterling plans pan Gujarat expansion

Invested Rs 50 cr for hospital in Bhavnagar

Addlife Medical Institute promoted Rs 150 crore Gujarat-based hospital chain Sterling Hospitals is targeting to touch 1100 beds by the end of the current fiscal from a current 900 beds.

Sterling Hospitals will touch a 900 bed strength on October 18 when its Bhavnagar facility will commence. The 180-bed Bhavnagar facility has come up with an investment of around Rs 50 crore.

Rajiv Sharma, chief executive officer of Sterling Addlife India Private Ltd said, "We plan to start a 100-bed strong hospital at Vadodara within the next six months. This would be an own and manage set up, where the property from where we would operate would be a leased one. Thus, the investment is low from our side. We are investing around Rs 15 crore to start this new facility at Vadodara". Sterling already operates a 110-bed hospital at Vadodara.

 

Sharma, however, declined to give out the overall investment figures to expand to 1100 beds by March 2011, saying that it would depend on o pportunities. The Group is weighing options for an inorganic expansion route. "We are considering two options for that, one, an outright acquisition, in which case the deal size would depend on what kind of a facility we decide to buy. And another, is the own and manage model like the one in Vadodara and Mundra SEZ, whereby, our investments could be substantially low", Sharma explained.

Currently, the group has four hospitals spread across Gujarat including Ahmedabad (300 beds), Vadodara (110 beds), Rajkot (190 beds) and Mundra SEZ (100 beds).

Sharma said that for the time being the company planned to expand and consolidate in Gujarat itself, beyond which the Group could look at venturing out to neighbouring states. Within Gujarat, Gandhidham and Surat are two locations that Sterling is looking at entering.

Meanwhile, the hospital group is also looking at setting up an information Centre in Africa from where it gets a steady flow of patients. "The countries of Nigeria and Kenya account for nearly 75-80 per cent of our African patients, and whenever we set up an international information centre it would be in the African continent. We are already in talks with some people there", Sharma said.