Competition in the private healthcare sector has been heating up with new entrants coming in. CNBC-TV18 learns that the battle in the capital has seen a new winner emerge — Fortis Healthcare.

Shivinder Singh the man behind Fortis Healthcare, part of the Ranbaxy group, has dislodged Apollo hospitals as the No 1 healthcare provider in the capital. Apollo has a turnover of about Rs220 crore in the capital.

However, since Fortis set up its first hospital in Noida in 2004, it has managed to garner double of that. With seven hospitals spread across the national capital region, the Fortis management believes that it''s the geographic reach coupled with multiple specialty units that has done the trick for them.

Shivinder M Singh, Group MD, Fortis says, "We are the largest players in North India. We have seven hospitals in Delhi, we are the largest player in Delhi by volume, number of beds, by financials, by any metric."

Spreading roots in North India further, Fortis will soon have a hospital in Jaipur and is also looking at Himachal Pradesh. Another key project for the company is a medi-city or a healthcare hub coming up in Gurgoan.

Spread over 75 acres, it has been designed to have multiple specialty units, a medical college and training institutes. However, this is likely to be functional only after two years.

Generating volumes and better reach is now the strategy for other leading players like Apollo and Max. Max Healthcare will open a facility in Gurgaon by Q2 of 2007 and is also targeting other cities in north India.

It hopes to up its turnover from the current Rs 250 crore to Rs 330 crore by March next year. Apollo currently has only one hospital in Delhi, but will soon inaugurate more units in the capital region.

The official spokesperson of Apollo said, "We will have a 57 bed hospital in Noida fully functional by next month. We are also working on an integrated cardiac plan on a national scale. We have already finalised on the two cardiac specialty units in NCR, which we will be buying over completely. With all this in the pipeline in the coming months, we are hoping to achieve a 25 per cent growth rate in the next one year."

With Fortis gearing up to enter key cities in the East, West and South India over the next twp - three years, the battle in private healthcare will move beyond the capital.