Metropolis gears up for version 3.0

Metropolis Healthcare has embarked on a new testing phase. The laboratory chain , is now gearing up to serve a large consumer base in the chronic and wellness segment. “On an average, 6 per cent of India is sick at any point in time. Our business was completely focussed on this segment (with acute diseases). Now, we are saying we will not only focus on the 6 per cent but also on the 94 per cent of India, which includes healthy individuals and people with chronic diseases,” Ameera Shah, MD, Metropolis Healthcare, said. The company has already begun work internally on various aspects including product innovation, pricing, change in focus from value to volume, consumer language, besides investing heavily on digital technology. “This is what we call Metropolis 3.0,” Shah said. “We started building a new tech architecture nine months ago. Brought a team from other industries such as telecom, insurance to bring consumer mindset,” Shah added. She expects the business pivot to take at least 1-2 years and it will create a good growth runway for the company. Until 2015, Metropolis Healthcare was predominantly a business-to-business (B2B) focussed player with 60 per cent of business coming from this segment in its focus cities while business-to-consumer (B2C) accounted for the remaining. It was then Shah decided to make Metropolis as a predominantly B2C brand. “That time we had only 300 centres while our competitors had few thousands. I brought the team, mindset, resources and tools to make the pivot and we started expanding on the retail side,” Shah said. The efforts paid off. Today, Metropolis’ business mix has changed to 60-40 per cent between B2C and B2B in its focus cities. . From 300 centres in 2016, the diagnostic chain today has about 3,200 centres across the country.