Drawing up ambitious plans to venture into newer areas, leading private boiler manufacturer Cethar Limited has decided to make foray into the healthcare sector in a big way and in the information technology field soon.
The Tiruchi-headquartered company, which has positioned itself as one of the leaders in power plant equipment manufacture, has already embarked on constructing a 30-bed hospital here with specialities in women and childcare and gastroenterology.
The Rs.8-crore hospital with advanced equipment coming up in the upscale Thillai Nagar area is expected to go on stream in April. The multi-crore company also has plans to establish a state-of-the-art 300-bed multi-speciality hospital at Pirattiyur here and a 3,000-bed advanced hospital along the Tiruchi-Dindigul national highway near Ammapettai, a few kilometres from the city.
The 300-bed hospital is expected to start functioning in 2015, Chairman K. Subburaj said. As for the 3,000-bed hospital, he said it would come up in 105 acres by 2019.
The idea behind entering the healthcare sector was to enable people get high quality treatment in Tiruchi instead of going to Chennai, he told reporters on the sidelines of ‘Athenaeum 2012', a two-day international conference on management research organised by the Bharathidasan Institute of Management here on Saturday.
Stating that healthcare was a growing industry offering great opportunities, Mr. Subburaj said the company would pump in equity of Rs.100 crore into the healthcare sector and raise the balance funds through loans.
To help the poor patients, a separate trust would be started in which a certain portion of the company's profit would be deposited to foot their full medical expenses after obtaining their credentials, he said. Mr. Subburaj said the idea of venturing into the healthcare sector was his long-cherished vision adding that dedicated software would be developed with respect to hospital management system and insurance claims. The company also plans to venture into the information technology (IT) sector by starting a marketing office in the U.S. in July, he said.
With an employee strength of 8,500 and a turnover of Rs.2,500 crore, Cethar has planned to handle African companies by starting an overseas marketing office in Dubai in 2014. “We will be expanding our overseas office at Singapore”, added Mr. Subburaj.
