What is the status of your IPO?
There was a proposal to list in London, but now we have decided to do it in India. We will be filing the Draft Red Herring Prospectus within the next three months and have the IPO done within 6-12 months. Bankers have been identified and we have three major banks – Kotak Mahindra, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch and Axis Bank helping us. We are planning for a 10 per cent dilution, which is the minimum required for the IPO.
Why the delay in going for IPO?
In Saudi Arabia, we have a hospital named Sanad Hospital, where a substantial portion of revenues is derived from patients referred and funded by the health ministry. But, due to the downturn and declining oil prices, there was a delay in payments from the government. In fact, we were planning to go for the IPO last year, but postponed it mainly because the money was stuck. Luckily, in the past three months, we have got a significant portion of the money.
What are your immediate expansion plans?
We are planning expansion in India as there is a requirement for quality healthcare. We have a few projects in the pipeline. One will be in Bengaluru. We will also have projects in Kannur and Thiruvananthapuram. We are looking at other places and even looking at opportunities for acquisition of existing hospitals or a chain of hospitals.
Internationally, we inaugurated a hospital in Dubai six months ago. We opened one in Sharjah a month ago and we plan to open one in Qatar in another month. Three more hospitals are in the pipeline in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.
How is the revenue from Indian entities compared to those in GCC?
In India, our total income is 10-15 per cent of the overall business. If you look at per-bed or per-patient collection, it is much higher in GCC even though the number of beds is more in India.
You recently launched an app for medical emergencies in Kozhikode. How does it work?
The app brings help to reach even before the ambulance arrives, providing Basic Life Support (BLS). The Golden Hour, which is the time after the incident, is crucial and any intervention can save lives.
Before even thinking of the app, we were training volunteers on BLS, and currently there are about 200,000 people trained. On using the application, named Aster Emergency App, the call goes to a call centre from where it gets connected to the GPS of a nearby ambulance as well as the BLS trained volunteer who is also in short distance from the incident. We have launched it in Kozhikode and wish to roll it out across the country. Anybody who wants to take it to any city can, and we are willing to share the technology as part of our CSR activity.