Metropolis Health Services, India's leading corporate chain in diagnostics, will be investing around Rs.100 crore for its domestic and international operations. Nearly Rs.60 crore would be spent to establish labs overseas and the remaining amount will be used to set up similar facilities within the country.

Speaking to Pharmabiz about their proposals, G S K Velu, managing director of Metropolis said that the company had entered into a joint venture agreement with Sri Lanka based Nawaloka Group. The labs under the group will be under the brand name, Nawaloka Materopolis.

There are plans to start 10 satellite labs in Sri Lanka out of which 4 would be secondary testing labs which would have the capacity to test around 1000 samples and 6 tertiary labs which would have the capacity to test around 3600 samples.

The company is also in the final stages of preparation to venture into other South East Asian countries like Thailand, Philippines and talks were on with Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia. Eyeing a growth in the market the organization is also on the move to set up centres in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal. Metropolis is planning to enter Pakistan with the help of Star group.

Velu said that Metropolis was also having keen interest in foraying into the South African market and the joint venture agreement with a company would be signed by September 2007. "The first centre would be started in Africa and from there we are planning to expand our base to other South African countries.

Speaking about their ventures into the Middle East market, Velu said that the company had some centres already functioning there and were planning to start centres in Muscat, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain by the end of the next quarter. Metropolis management desires to cover Saudi Arabia and other countries by the end of 2007 and desires to cover the entire Middle East market jointly with the UAE based Star group.

The company also has plans to expand its diagnostic centres across the country to aid the availability of insurance even for prevention of diseases and diagnostics. "As of now the insurance companies are providing insurance coverage for the people who get admitted into hospitals. But we want them to provide insurance even for the out patients. As of now they are giving that scheme, as there are no national composite pathology centres. So we though of spreading our centres throughout the country so that the insurance companies can extend their services even to the people who undergo diagnosis," said Velu.