The New Delhi-based Dr Lal PathLabs Pvt. Ltd (LPL) has taken the first step in becoming a national chain of pathology testing centres with the acquisition of Raptakos Brett Diagnostic Laboratories (RDBL) in Mumbai.

Announcing this today, LPL managing director Dr Arvind Lal told newspersons that the new acquisition would help LPL to establish a presence in several cities in Maharashtra and Gujarat through 25 collection centres that would feed the pathology laboratory in Mumbai.

Besides, it would add about Rs two crore to LPL's existing turnover of about Rs 25 crore.

The first phase of this expansion would take the company into Pune, Kolhapur, Solapur and Nagpur in Maharashtra apart from Amedabad, Surat and Varodara in Gujarat. They would slowly spread its wings to other cities in western India during the next six to nine months.

Soon afterwards LPL would make inroads into southern India, starting with Chennai about 12 months from now,” Dr Lal said.

More immediate is the task of integrating LPL's systems and equipment with Raptakos, which could take as long as six months because many of the facilities at RBDL are already outdated, Dr Lal said. LPL would have to pump in about Rs 3 crore in the next two years to modernize the set up, he added.

LPL offers over 2000 different investigations and panels in the scientific disciplines of molecular diagnostics, biophysics, virology, flow cytometry, immuno-phenotyping, cyto-genetics, oncology, toxicology, immunochemistry. It handles samples from about 1500 patients who visit LPL's 200-odd collection centres each day.

These samples are processed at the LPL laboratories in Okhla, and Gurgaon, but some would now be handled at the newly acquired laboratory in Mumbai. Soon the Gurgaon establishment would also have the capacity to conduct non-pathology tests such as x-rays, CT scan, mammography, MRI, etc, thus making it a complete centre for any kind of diagnosis.