Apollo Hospitals - A True Manifestation of Indian Ingenuity

As we docked in India, we all rushed to the local Mall to try and get some shopping done before we had to go on our field trip with the students. I, as usual, went to the book store and picked up the local business journal called “Business India”, among others. On the cover of the magazine was the photograph of the chairman of Apollo Hospitals, Dr. Reddy with the caption: “Going Global after 25 years in health service.” How appropriate, I thought. The next day we were going to a meeting organized by the COO of Apollo Hospitals as part of their monthly meetyou.com chapter get together.
As we navigated, the next day, the very congested and busy streets of Chennai, I reminded the students of the copy of the article I gave them that morning so they can scan it before we got to our meeting. I felt the article was a great testament to the creative forces propelling India into a world leader in the area of globalization. The students, however, needed to take an actual look at the company’s main building to believe some of the words, since the route to our destination was froth with the typical scenery of Chennai of so many vehicles amongst droves of people, many of whom were clearly very poor. India, as we learned very quickly, is a study of contrasts. ..
The building we entered was like any other modern building yet in nestled not in a fancy office complex but rather in the midst what seemed to be an old non-descript part of town. Walking inside, however, we were taken to a beautiful conference room and greeted by a young man who introduced himself as, Dr. C.J. Vetrievel, the COO of the company. He projected an aura of ease and confidence that put us all at ease, despite the fact that we were late and the people we were supposed to meet from the ‘meetyou’ group were late too.
Apollo Group’s prospects are considered excellent by many analysts. Citigroup even put out a report a few months ago saying that “Apollo’s superiority in a growing sector with high entry barriers calls for premium valuations.” The founder of Apollo started the company 25 years ago. He is now 75 years old and his 4 daughters have been designated as the team to take over the group’s future. He said in the article: “I have been telling the government healthcare should be made into a priority sector. If that happens, the industry will witness an explosive growth within a couple of years.”
In the article he also talks about an exciting new project that is typical of Apollo’s pioneer spirit. In March of last year, they have entered into a partnership with IBM to set up a giant repository of health-related information to which every doctor in the country would eventually have access. Already 80-90 people based in Chennai are working full time on this project. The first phase, in which 100 hospitals and 1000 doctors would be linked with each other, is expected to become operational in the next 3 months. This will then be scaled up ten-fold during the rest of this year! The project aims to improve healthcare services, map disease patterns and alert the medical establishment about emerging problem areas. Even at an individual level, doctors would be able to make more informed decisions than they do at present. “The superhighway would function as a separate company in which Apollo would clearly have an important role to play.”
The COO wanted to focus his presentation on medical tourism. Apollo has recently hired a high executive away from HCA in the US to seek international investors as well as develop a customer base for Apollo in the United States by appealing to labor unions.
Currently medical tourism is associated mainly with Thailand and covers mostly plastic surgery. India is targeting countries such as the UK for all medical procedures. The UK government, Dr. C.J. told us, Can no longer support the UK’s health care needs that have exceeded $160 billion. Britons are still experiencing long queues in an ineffectual system. So now they are seeking an alternative with an emphasis on quality care. Thailand and India are well suited to meet a demand such as that because in a highly capital intensive industry, their people were able to absorb the technology and learn it quickly. Doctors’ soft skills are there and also many Indian doctors are willing to come back home from the UK and the US.
Currently Thailand and India are offering 15 days medical tourism packages that include 7 days of hospital care and 7 days of vacation all in one package! Pre and post links with home doctors have been established and tele-medicine plays an important role with the use of videoconferencing and the Internet.
Apollo has 4 hospitals that receive overseas patients. Chennai is a heart center with 150 foreigners coming there a month for treatment. The UK is highly supportive of medical tourism since it started developing a hybrid health care system of private and public systems working together.