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Under Suneeta Reddy, Apollo Hospitals Has Grown Its Revenue and Become India’s Largest Healthcare Chain Operator. The Group’s Latest Offering—the Proton Therapy Centre for Cancer Care, the First in South Asia—will Give It an Edge Over Peers and Help People From India, South Asia, and West Asia, Says Reddy.

- Debojyoti Ghosh

SUNEE TA REDDY IS A NAME that carries considerable heft in the healthcare sector in India. The 59-year-old managing director of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise, along with her three sisters, has transformed a 180-bed hospital, started by her father in 1983 in Chennai, into the largest hospital chain operator in the country.

Reddy joined Apollo in 1989. Her financial acumen made her spearhead the finance and strategy divisions of the hospital chain. Despite operating in a highly competitive and regulated industry, she has managed to grow the group’s revenues. She was ranked No. 3 on Fortune India’s Most Powerful Women in business list last year. With over 10,000 beds across 70 hospitals, Apollo now has a presence in India, Oman, and Bangladesh. Besides hospitals, the group has also expanded into pharmacy stores, diagnostic centres, clinics, and telemedicine units. In January, Apollo opened a proton therapy centre in Chennai, the first in South Asia, with an investment of 1,300 crore, making India the 16th country in the world to offer proton therapy for cancer care. In an interview with Fortune India, Reddy talks about the centre, its expansion plans, and the group’s focus on the latest offerings in cancer treatment. Edited excerpts:

Healthcare is a highly competitive business. With newer players entering the business, how will Apollo maintain its edge?

The edge we want to maintain is the clinical edge, which will drive all of our revenues. If you look at how we are growing, it will show that the revenues are coming from our centres of excellence, such as cardiac, orthopaedic, oncology, neurology, and by doing so we have leading market share in the cities that we are present. So we do have a plan to continue to increase our market share, and so far, we have been successful.