Dr Agarwal's Eye Hospital secures Rs 215 crore funding, charts expansion plans

As things stand, Agarwal’s has a pan-India presence of 91 hospitals across 12 States and an additional 14 hospitals in Africa. “Our 500-crore-rupee investment roadmap will focus on opening a total of 150 hospitals within India,” said Agarwal, "We need to build around 60 more hospitals, which will be done in the next three years.”

Its pan-India expansion plan will also see Agarwal’s Healthcare Limited focus on improving its footprint in Maharashtra through a series of greenfield and brownfield projects.

Inside Dr Agarwal's Eye Hospital.

"When we opened our first hospital in Pune, our brand was strong in the region, and we thus decided to start a brownfield development,” said Agarwal, “The advantage we enjoyed was that from day one, we began seeing income flow in.” The company also has plans to increase its hospital count in Africa from 14 to over 20 in a year’s time.

Given the CDC Group’s focus on Africa and South Asia, Agarwal’s Healthcare Limited is looking to bank on the fund to boost its overseas presence, in addition to expanding in Maharashtra, Kerala and central India. “We will also be investing more in cutting edge technology such as SMILE, Femto Laser and Robotic Cataract Surgery across our centres,” said Adil Agarwal, the company’s chief executive officer.

The healthcare major’s scale-up comes as it projects patient inflow to increase over the next three years. "Every day, nearly 15,000 patients walk into an Agarwal’s Eye Hospital," said Amar Agarwal, “In two to three years’ time, we expect that number to double to 30,000, which could see a total inflow of nearly one lakh people into our hospitals.” Increasing the number of hospitals, the chairman said, would also result in a corresponding increase in allied businesses like pharmacies.