Apollo Health and Lifestyle Ltd, a subsidiary of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd, has short-listed three private equity firms and expects to close a deal to raise ₹500 crore by March to fuel its expansion plans.

Neeraj Garg, Chief Executive Officer of Apollo Health, told BusinessLine : “The process is at the due diligence stage and we expect to conclude the transaction before the end of this financial year. It may not be right to disclose the names of the PEs now.”

Likely suitors According to sources, the short-listed PEs include KKR, Apax Partners and Carlyle Group.

Apollo Health operates a network of primary care and specialty care hospitals across the formats of Apollo Clinics, Apollo Sugar, Apollo Diagnostics, Apollo White and Apollo Dialysis. Also in its portfolio are Apollo Cradle and Apollo Spectra Hospitals.

Given the potential to grow these businesses, it has been planning to raise ₹500 crore.

Speaking after the launch of a lab and patient care centre under the Diagnostics division here, Garg outlined plans to expand the chain in a phased manner, at an investment of ₹200 crore. “We have 15 labs and 200 collection centres in South India. It is proposed to set up 200 labs and 1,000 collection centres over the next three years.

“The idea is to cover all the district headquarters in the country. The expansion will see an investment of about ₹150-200 crore,” he said.

While Apollo Diagnostics has 15 labs and 80-plus patient care centres in Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, Pune, Mysuru, Mangaluru, Vijayawada and Warangal, it plans to launch 200 labs and 1,000 patient care centres over five years in tier 2 cities like Madurai, Tiruchi, Hubli, Visakhapatnam, Kurnool, Rajahmundry and Nashik.

Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals, said in a statement: “Apollo Diagnostics is also taking the franchise route to actualise its vision of establishing a hi-performance chain of diagnostic centres across the country.”

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