Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd (AHEL), the country’s largest listed hospital chain by beds, is betting on its planned capacity expansion as well as its clinical programmes and expertise to maintain its lead in an increasingly competitive private healthcare market, its top management said.
The hospital chain, which commissioned four hospitals in Pune, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Delhi in FY26, plans to add about 1,500 beds in the next 12-18 months. This includes beds in the new hospitals as well as existing ones.
“We think capacity is a strategically important lever… it will place us as the largest player substantially in terms of bed capacity. But beyond that, if you look at the growth that we've seen reported, that is not a one-time growth or demand generation,” Dr Madhu Sasidhar, chief executive officer of the hospitals division, told Mint.
“We put a lot of work into clinical programme development, clinical differentiation—everything from recruitment to putting together teams and the infrastructure that they need. It has been a multi-year effort,” he added.
Strong revenue growth
Apollo Hospitals currently has 10,970 beds across 78 hospitals. In FY26, its hospitals business reported revenue of ₹12,555 crore, up 13% from the previous year.
Its diagnostics and retail health business grew 20% to ₹1,865 crore, while the omnichannel pharmacy business, Apollo HealthCo, saw revenue grow 19% to ₹10,808 crore. The overall business grew 16% to ₹25,229 crore.
The company sees growing synergies between its diagnostics and primary care business and the hospitals one. “There is a substantial amount of hospital-generated revenue that goes to the diagnostics business. And as they continue to invest more in high-end diagnostics and molecular genetics, our oncology work is going to be critical to feed into that,” said Sasidhar.
The hospital chain expects to operationalize 670 beds in its new commissioned hospitals in the next 12-18 months. In addition, Apollo “will also be operationalizing in Q1FY27 the new hospital in Sarjapur (near Bengaluru) with 170 beds. And hopefully, by Q2, we should also be operationalizing our 400-bedded Gurugram facility,” Krishnan Akhileswaran, chief financial officer, told Mint.
The revenue contribution from new beds was 2% in the quarter ended March, but the company expects the contribution to accelerate this year.
Apart from the new hospitals, the chain is also focusing on bed addition in the existing hospitals, which is “very important because when we expand adjacent, then we get the ability to be able to see that revenue flow through to Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization) much more rapidly,” said Sasidhar.
Apollo is looking at the Hyderabad and Bengaluru markets for adjacent opportunities to expand.
The company posted its financial results for the quarter and fiscal year ended March on Wednesday. For the quarter, it posted a 36% year-on-year rise in consolidated net profit to ₹529 crore, compared to ₹389 crore a year ago. Revenues grew 18% year-on-year to ₹6,605 crore from ₹5,592 crore.
At the operating level, Ebitda was at ₹1,011 crore, marking a 31.5% year-on-year increase from ₹769 crore, while Ebitda margins expanded by 154 basis points to 15.3%.
Apollo Hospitals' listed peers include Max Healthcare, Fortis Healthcare and Aster DM-Quality Care. Manipal Hospitals, not listed on the stock exchanges, is also a key player in India's rapidly growing healthcare space.