Apollo's Healthcare Architect

Dr Prathap Reddy, who introduced corporate healthcare to India, has built Apollo into the country's largest hospital chain, with technology at the forefront.

- Anup Jayaram

IN THE EARLY ’70S, a letter from his father prompted Dr Prathap Chandra Reddy to leave his nine-year-old cardiology practice in the U.S. and move back to Madras (Chennai). His father wanted him to do something that would benefit the people of India, rather than just make his parents happy. Considering his four daughters were then between 7-12 years, moving back to India was not a difficult decision for Dr Reddy.

What struck him when he returned was the lack of critical healthcare infrastructure in the country. Dr Reddy recommended many patients to go to the U.S. for surgery. The turning point came when he lost a 38-year-old man with two young children in 1979 because he could not raise $50,000 for the operation, prompting Dr Reddy to build an Indian hospital chain. Till then, large hospitals in India were mostly run by the government.

It was not going to be easy, though. A hospital needed land, funding and state-of-the-art technology. Land was not available due to restrictions under the Land Ceiling Act. “What was needed was support. The support mechanism is the technology to back it up and the systems. To put systems is fine, but to bring technology we were not allowed loans. I couldn’t get funding, because, although a hotel gets funding from the bank, hospitals were then not eligible for funding,” says Dr Reddy. To top it all, customs duty on health equipment was 300%, which made it a luxury item.

It was finally Pranab Mukherjee, the then finance minister, who helped clear funding for hospitals. “He gave an order, saying, six banks will fund you ₹5 crore each. That’s how the first hospital happened,” says Dr Reddy. In September 1983, then president Giani Zail Singh inaugurated the first-ever Apollo hospital in Madras’ Greams Road, named after Apollo, the Greek god of healing. To achieve this, Reddy made almost 60 trips to Delhi!