Funding the Last Dose ; After Being Bailed Out by Equity From Icici Venture and Loans From Sbi, Medica has Stabilised Cash Flows but Needs to Secure a Small Funding Component.
Summary
His is a dissenting voice in a world enamoured of private equity (PE) funds and multinational banks: he would rather swear by the slow but sure processes of government banks. The best decision he has taken in his life? Borrowing from State Bank of India (SBI)! Meet Dr Alok Roy, an MD from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and a specialist in nuclear cardiology, who decided to begin a second life by doing his own healthcare consultancy, building hospitals and creating a pharma retail chain after building hospitals for others.
But his rebirth, as he terms it, was almost aborted by riskaverse PEs, venture capitalists and banks. We went to banks, we must have visited at least 20 PEs, including the big names, recalls Dr Roy, Chairman and Managing Director of Medica Synergie, which he set up with Aruna Nair and seven others in 2003. To get venture funding in India is very difficult. They don't want to experiment, they don't have the guts, they don't want to invest in a new business, says the 50-year-old Roy, whose 600-employee company reported a turnover of Rs 40 crore in 2008-09.See the full content of this document
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Funding the Last Dose ; After Being Bailed Out by Equity From Icici Venture and Loans From Sbi, Medica has Stabilised Cash Flows but Needs to Secure a Small Funding Component.
The first break came when ICICI Venture pumped in Rs 35 crore. The second came when Dr Roy approached SBI for a loan, and got around Rs 62 crore. For me, it was a second life. Instead of retiring, I started a new career, recalls Dr Roy, who says he had a hand in building every hospital associated with noted cardiac surgeon Devi Shetty, right from B.M. Birla Heart Research Centre and the Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences (R...
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