A leading chain of fertility centres, Milann, which has opened its Chandigarh centre recently, will look beyond Bengaluru, and open more centres across the country.

With five centres in Bengaluru, and one each in Delhi and Chandigarh, the fertility centre is also looking at acquisitions to expand its footprint.

nn-The Fertility Centre Medical Director Dr Kamini Rao, who established the centre in 1989. HCG bought a majority stake in it over three years ago, and from then on, the hospital is on an expansion spree.

Dr Rao said the centre has always been profitable. “It was not because of money that we sold it to HCG. I looked at a strategic partner and we needed to grow the business. If I were to start establishing our corporate culture, just within the facility, it will be too much of an expense for such a small enterprise. The strategy was to bring in HCG’s core competences to the admin side and with my core skill on the clinical side,” the leading infertility specialist said.

Milann has been getting requests to set up a centre within multi-speciality hospitals. “For them, it’s a win-win, but we have taken a decision not to get involved in co-branding. Centres which are standalone tend to do better than centres that are in larger hospitals,” said Milann-The Fertility Centre Group CEO Jasdeep Singh.

When asked about expansion, Singh said that it will be both organic and inorganic. “It costs Rs 6-7 crore to set up a centre. In the coming financial year, we are looking for a lot of consolidates because many of our centres will be new, and we obviously want to acquire only the ones that make sense. As of now, our focus will be to make sure that we are operationally as good as our Bengaluru centres.”

Talking about competition, Dr Rao said that competition is always good. “All of our competitors are doing well. All of them are in expansion mode. The only thing is that other than just going to metro cities, tier II and III cities should be concentrated upon, as they are the future that is still unexplored.”

Milann, which was growing at 20% last year, hopes that once its new centres are open, its growth in the coming years will be much more.