How Ranjan Pai is endeavoring to make Manipal Hospitals India's greatest medical care player

Ranjan Pai is fortifying Manipal Clinics' presence in the nation with a series of acquisitions, with eyes on turning into a market chief and taking his endeavor public to control the following period of development.

In a year when India’s overburdened healthcare ecosystem had been stretched thin, Pai, the canny businessman and grandson of the illustrious Tonse Madhava Ananth Pai, founder of Manipal Hospitals, has been busy fortifying plans to take his family’s crown jewel on a rather ambitious journey.

In just one year, Pai’s Manipal Health Enterprises Private Limited (MHEPL) has completed the acquisition of two hospital groups and is in the middle of closing another one, worth a combined ₹4,000 crore, at a time when numerous hospitals across India have shut down due to the financial turmoil caused by Covid-19.

It all started with the acquisition of Bengaluru-based Columbia Asia hospitals last April for ₹2,100 crores which gave the group an additional 1,300 beds across 11 hospitals. That was followed by the acquisition of Bengaluru-based Vikram Hospital for ₹350 crores, adding another 200 beds. Now, Manipal is in the midst of advanced talks with Kolkata-based AMRI Hospitals, owned by the Emami Group, to purchase four hospitals in an attempt to build its presence in the eastern region.

The deal will also make Manipal the largest hospital group in eastern India and puts it within striking distance of India’s largest hospital chain, Apollo Hospitals, though Pai says he isn’t in it for the numbers game. A trained doctor himself, Pai’s acquisition of three hospital chains comes at a time when no other hospital group has followed a similar trajectory in the past few years.

And much of that may have to do with two failed transactions over the past few years when the group was looking to strengthen its business in northern India. Back in 2018, Pai and his team revised their offer three times to acquire New Delhi-based Fortis Hospitals and its subsidiary, SRL Diagnostics, for ₹3,300 crores.

“We’ve always been looking since the Fortis transaction to expand our footprint because, while we continue to do greenfield projects, it takes time to build a hospital,” Pai says. That’s precisely why the acquisition of AMRI Hospitals works out well for the company’s foray into the eastern region, where it has one hospital, which too came into its hands only last year by virtue of its acquisition of Columbia Asia Hospitals.

For a long time, Manipal Hospital was a South-focussed health care provider, something that Pai and his team are now looking to change quickly. By 1991, the group set up Manipal Hospitals and its first hospital came into existence in Bengaluru. While the education vertical is split into two divisions—Manipal University, a self-financing, not-for-profit deemed university, and Manipal Universal Learning, a commercial venture which operates colleges in Malaysia, Antigua, Dubai, and Nepal—much of Pai’s attention over the past few years has shifted to health care, as the pandemic necessitates a relook at the sector in India.

The recent acquisition of Columbia hospitals also adds over ₹1,000 crores to the company’s topline. The hospital business has two greenfield projects coming up in Bengaluru in addition to one in Pune. Over the past few years, the Manipal Group has also been steadily shifting focus to North India, to build a pan-India business. “This is a big country, and I don’t think anybody can technically be a pan-India player,” Pai says. “We’ll continue to grow in the next five years,” Pai says. 

The last two acquisitions, Pai says, have been easy, especially with smooth integration, largely because of the existing systems and processes at the hospitals. “Tomorrow, Apollo can acquire another hospital and I don’t think it’s about being the largest,” Pai says. For Pai and Manipal, however, super-specialty hospitals remain at the center of all plans.

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