Manipal Healthcare Enterprises is planning to build a multi-specialty hospital in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, with an investment of ₹350–400 crore.
According to Dilip Jose, CEO and MD of MHEL, the new hospital is expected to be operational in two years and it would add 300 beds to the existing bed capacity.
The hospital chain has a bed capacity of 7,850 beds and operates 28 hospitals across 15 cities.
“In the next two-three months, we intend to start working on the hospital in Raipur. Initially, we will add 300 beds, but this will expand to 450 beds when needed,” explained Jose.
Similar to this, the hospital chain is building two facilities in Bengaluru, each with an individual capacity of 250 beds, at an estimated cost of ₹350 crore each.
It will invest ₹180–200 crore annually to modernise and renovate its facilities and larger-scale expenditure.
Brownfield expansion
Jose elaborated, “As for brownfield expansion, Kerala, Hyderabad, and Kolkata are the immediate geographies of interest, and we are expecting that some of these deals will fructify in the next 12 months.” To date, Manipal Hospital has made five acquisitions, the last being Vikram Hospital in 2021.
“Brownfields are opportunistic existing assets. So it’s not exactly the cookie-cutter type of thing we imagine when we think of greenfields. We are primarily focused on tertiary and quaternary care, and there would be large tertiary care hospitals, but the sizes would vary because these are existing facilities,” he added.
According to the CEO, in the last six months, the patient footfall has crossed the pre-covid levels: “We see close to 4 lakh patients in a month, which is a 25 per cent improvement over their pre-Covid levels across our network because people are comfortable accessing hospitals to come for all kinds of healthcare requirements.” The hospital chain claims that it serves over 4.5 million patients annually. With outsourced coworkers included, MHEL employs 20,000 individuals across its hospitals. I