Niira Radia's Nayati to enter NCR market with new hospital in Gurugram

NEW DELHI/GURUGRAM: A new private hospital is likely to become functional in the city early next year. Called PrimaMed, the 600-bed facility is coming up on Golf Course Road and will mark the entry of Nayati Healthcare, which is promoted by Niira Radia, in NCR.
Nayati acquired majority stakes (51%) in PrimaMed hospital this week as well as PrimaMed Vimhans, which is located near Ashram in Delhi. The construction of PrimaMed Gurugram will be completed early next year, an official spokesperson said. Nayati is partnering with OSL healthcare, headed by Vimhas founder Dr Rajiv Sharma, to run PrimaMed.

Nayati presently operates Nayati Medicity in Mathura and Nayati Hospital in Agra and has plans to expand further to areas like Amritsar, Varanasi, Lucknow and Nagpur, sources said.

While Gurugram's healthcare scene is dominated by private sector players like Fortis, Medanta, Artemis, Max and Paras, new companies have also been entering the market. The Narayana group, popular for its low-cost medical care in the southern parts of India, forayed into Gurugram recently by setting up a multi-specialty hospital in DLF-3. Incidentally, the Narayana group has taken over the management of Dharmshila Cancer Hospital in east Delhi.

Nayati said it has used a variety of methods for acquisition of stakes, including its own working capital, internal accruals, equity and debt, and the purchase of debentures. The company's idea in acquiring PrimaMed would be to mobilise "talent pool" from Delhi-NCR and use them for their other hospitals in UP and a hospital being planned in Amrtisar.

Asked about the competition they might encounter in Gurugram, a spokesperson for the company said there was a "huge gap in the number of patients and the number of beds required", in the city and there would be "no competition" as it expected continued flow of patients.

Radia, once an influential corporate lobbyist and public relations professional, decided to exit the communications consultancy business in October 2011 after her name emerged in the 2G spectrum scandal. Radia's public relations firms - Vaishnavi Corporate Communications and Neucom Consulting - snapped ties with Tata Group and Reliance Industries, two of the country's leading corporate houses, and closed both her PR firms. Radia had set up Vaishnavi after winning the public relations mandate for Tata Group companies in 2001.

Radia courted controversy when the 2G scandal broke as tapped telephone conversations between her and senior politicians, top industrialists, bureaucrats and journalists emerged in the public domain.