REIMAGINING FORTIS

AFTER SURVIVING A FINANCIAL CRISIS AND WITH MOST COURT CASES NEARING CLOSURE, FORTIS HEALTHCARE, UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT, IS EMBARKING ON AN AMBITIOUS JOURNEY TO SOLIDIFY ITS POSITION IN THE INDUSTRY 

- NEETU CHANDRA SHARMA

AS EVENING TURNS into night, Gurugram’s skyline lights up outside Dr Ashutosh Raghuvanshi’s window at Fortis Healthcare’s corporate office. Raghuvanshi exudes the quiet confidence of the seasoned cardiac surgeon that he is, but his scalpel of choice today is not surgical steel. As MD and CEO of Fortis Healthcare, Raghuvanshi’s strategic vision is at work, pulling the once-ailing healthcare giant back from the brink of insolvency.

Just five years ago, Fortis Healthcare was headed for the operation theatre with a clutch of issues—operational ones and legacy issues left by its former owners that led to legal battles. IHH, the Malaysian healthcare major now in control of Fortis, had a troubled entry.

But despite a shaky start in 2018-19, with IHH taking over on November 13, 2018, and then giving the helm to Raghuvanshi on March 18, 2019, and the unprecedented chaos of the Covid-19 pandemic that followed, upsetting routine operations at all hospitals, Fortis Healthcare has been showing signs of recovery.

Revenues and profitability are up; debt is down. Today, it has 27 hospitals and 4,500+ operational beds. Before IHH took over, Fortis closed 2017-18 with a loss of ₹934.42 crore on total revenue of ₹4,560.81 crore. Thanks to the leadership of Raghuvanshi, Fortis closed 2022-23 with a profit of ₹633 crore on total revenue of ₹6,298 crore. For the first nine months of the current financial year (2023-24), Fortis reported a profit after tax of ₹442 crore on total revenue of ₹5,107 crore.

PUTTING THE PAST BEHIND