Apollo Hospitals picks up Kolkata unit for Rs 102 cr

KOLKATA: Apollo Hospitals on Wednesday said it has acquired a partially built hospital at Sonarpur in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas with a total capacity of 325 beds in a bid to ramp up its healthcare capacity in the Eastern region.

Future Oncology Hospital and Research Center was acquired in an all cash deal of Rs 102 crore by Apollo Multi-specialty Hospitals Ltd, a wholly owned unlisted subsidiary of Apollo Hospitals Enterprises.

The acquisition is being fully funded through its own internal accruals, the company informed the bourses.

This will be the second Apollo Hospital in the Kolkata region and fifth in the eastern region.

The announcement comes close on the heels of Manipal Hospitals acquiring an 84 per cent stake in AMRI Hospitals Ltd having a total of 1,200 beds in three hospitals at an enterprise valuation of Rs 2,500 crore.

"The addition of this new facility is part of our planned capacity expansion across the country and will allow us to serve even more people in the region," Apollo Hospital's managing director Suneeta Reddy said.

The first phase of 225 beds of the partially built 325-bed hospital will be commissioned in the next 12 months, company officials said.

Apollo said it will augment its capacity in the East by an addition of another 700 beds over the next three years, taking the total bed count in the eastern region to 2,500 from 1,800.

Apollo has hospitals in Bhubaneswar and Guwahati in the Eastern region. Apollo is India's largest integrated healthcare platform with over 10,000 beds across 71 hospitals.