LEADING WITH HEART

Aiming to touch a billion lives, Suneeta Reddy is focussed on investing and expanding Apollo Hospitals' footprint across the group's many verticals

- Neetu Chandra Sharma

A WOMAN OF habit, Suneeta Reddy, MD of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise, has been striving hard since she joined the business in 1989 to keep it at the forefront of healthcare services in the country. Under her leadership, Apollo— which started as a single hospital in Chennai in 1983—has now mushroomed into one of the biggest healthcare businesses in India. Today, it offers a wide range of healthcare services through its chain of 71 hospitals, over 5,400 pharmacies, and 250 primary healthcare centres spread across India. And even as it faces stiff competition from several quarters across its verticals, its growth momentum has continued under Reddy’s care.

As one of a handful of businesswomen in the Indian healthcare industry, Reddy is credited with bringing the first foreign direct investment into healthcare in 1995, and subsequently taking the organisation to the international equity markets through the successful placement of a global depository receipt in 2005.

With her focus on growth and profitability, Apollo’s consolidated revenues and net profit have grown at annualised rates of 15 per cent and 37 per cent, respectively, in the past five years. “I think we have been fortunate to have executed many decisions at the right time and place, and this has come from understanding the pulse of the organisation and the ecosystems around it,” says Reddy.