Baby Steps For Fortis

In two years, India's second largest health care company has reduced its debt from a high of Rs 7,000 crore to less than Rs 1,200 crore. But, in the process, promoters Malvinder and Shivinder Mohan Singh had to sacrifice their international dreams.

- Shabana Hussain

A giant ivory-coloured smiling baby with a stethoscope dangling from its ears sits in the middle of the lobby at Fortis Memorial Research Institute in Gurgaon near Delhi. The diaphragm of the stethoscope rests firmly on the ground. The sculpture had been commissioned by brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Mohan Singh, the founders of India’s second-largest hospital chain, Fortis Healthcare Ltd. The baby represents Fortis, and the stethoscope signifies its grounded approach to the business of health care. “We had asked artist Jitish Kallat to do a marquee piece for us for our ninth anniversary (in 2010),” says 40-year-old Shivinder, the younger of the two brothers and executive vice chairman of the company. “We [Fortis] have become very large but are child-like in our approach to health care because we still have our ear to the ground.”

Five years have gone by since the installation of the sculpture, during which time Fortis’s revenue has increased 341 percent from Rs 938 crore in FY2010 to Rs 4,140 crore in FY2015. Shivinder jokes that the baby, too, should have grown in size. “Maybe we need to give it some clothes and shoes,” he laughs. Almost immediately, the mirth fades and he adds solemnly: “But we did sell a lot of our international assets as well, so that reduced our size.” And this sums up Fortis Healthcare’s 14-year-old journey, which started in 2001 with a single hospital in Mohali, Punjab.