The Chennai-based Dr Agarwal’s Eye Hospital, one of the largest eye hospital chains in the country, is all set to open three hospital facilities in Hyderabad in 2011 as part of its expansion plans in Andhra Pradesh.


The group, which is already present in the state with a facility at Chittoor, will open the Secunderabad facility by February, 2011 and Panjagutta facility will be operational by March 25, 2011. It is also planning to open another centre at Abids in Hyderabad by June 2011. As part of its expansion drive in Andhra Pradesh, the group has already opened two facilities in Hyderabad, one at Dilshuk Nagar and another at Kukattapally. The group will make a total invest of Rs.45 crore in the state.


In a telephonic interaction with Pharmabiz, S Rajagopalan, director of Dr Agarwal’s Group of Healthcare, said, “Panjagutta and Secunderabad centres will function as tertiary centres for the whole Andhra Pradesh with the facilities like cataract surgeries, paediatric ophthalmology, general ophthalmology, glaucoma, ocular oncology and Lasik, a type of refractive surgery for correcting vision disorders”.


Some of the very senior surgeons from the main facility, located in Chennai, will shift to Andhra Pradesh as part of the plan to launch Dr Agarwal’s operations in the state. The new centres in Hyderabad will have manpower strength of 50 eye surgeons and 400 other staff. It has already recruited 25 ophthalmologists out of the 50, who are undergoing training, and the remaining 25 will be recruited in another few months.


The group is also planning to open 10 facilities in selected district headquarters in the state in the year 2012. All these planned-centres will be surgical centres.


Commenting on the group’s Andhra Pradesh entry, Rajagopalan said, “AP is one of the most populated states of southern India and very few private large specialty players are present in the state and there is a huge scope for players like us. Our aim is to deliver high quality hitech ophthalmology at a very affordable price in the neighbourhood, which is still not available in the state.”


The Panjagutta facility will have facilities for research activities and the areas of research will be cataract, cornea, retina and paediatric ophthalmology. The Chennai-based group has a total of 35 facilities, with facilities in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Mauritius.