Devi Prasad Shetty, Founder and Chairman of Narayana Hrudayalaya Ltd, has said the cost of land in Mumbai makes affordable hospitals in the city impossible, but his firm is lucky that rich industrialists in Mumbai has come together to build a building at Haji Ali for a super-specialty hospital for children.
The hospital is the brainchild of the Society for Rehabilitation of Crippled Children (SRCC) and will be managed by Narayana Hrudayalaya chain of hospitals. S Ramadorai, former vice chairman of TCS, is chairman of the SRCC.
“In Mumbai, you can’t build an affordable hospital, because of the cost of land. We are building a children’s hospital at Haji Ali where the value of land might be Rs 1,000 crore. But it is free for us. And the building is built by the trust. So we don’t pay for the building. All the rich industrialists of Mumbai have come together and they have built the building. Our job is to reduce the price and make it affordable to the people, which we are going to do,” Dr. Shetty told The Hindu , on the sidelines of the firm’s IPO launch.
“Only because of this contribution, affordable health care is possible in Mumbai. Otherwise, commercially buying the land building is not feasible,” he added.
Dr. Shetty said his friend Amit Chandra, managing director of Bain Capital, and Mr. Ramadurai raised close to Rs 85 crore to build the hospital. Dr Shetty said the firm was looking at replicating the Mumbai model.
