Apollo Hospitals to spend Rs3,000 crore; add 4000 beds

Apollo Hospitals plans to invest Rs3,000 crore for its expansion plans by 2014, the group's chairman Prathap Reddy said in Hyderabad today.

With the objective of adding 4,000 beds, the company is in talks with private equity (PE) players and other financial institutions to fund the upcoming projects. ''Funds are not an issue. Many investors are interested in investing in our company and we are in talks with them," Reddy told newspersons.

He said Apollo invested Rs1,800 crore during 2009-10. "We have an excellent debt-equity ratio and can borrow further from banks and financial institutions to meet our investment needs. PE investors from London, Hong Kong and New York are evincing interest to invest.

We are in talks but are yet to identify and finalise how much we need from them," Reddy said.

Replying to a query on stake dilution, Reddy said, "At the moment, we are comfortably placed at about 37 per cent.

There are some close groups who are associated with us, who have got about 16-17 per cent. We will look at it when we expand."