Private equity firm TVS Capital through its TVS Shriram Growth Fund along with ePlanet Capital have made a further investment of $2.5 million(Rs 12.5 crore) in Chennai-based eye-care hospital chain Medfort Hospitals. The proceeds will be utilised to expand the chain in the Chennai market, one of the investors said.
“The second round of investment was made to help company undertake further expansion plans around Chennai region,” Manish Makhariya, executive director of TVS Capital Ltd said.
According to him, the fund infusion will take care of the capital needs of the company for another two to three years. “Since opening eye care hospitals is not a very capital intensive business, as of now we have no plans for further fund raising,” he added.
GSK Velu, managing director of Medfort Hospitals confirmed the fund raised, an e-mail query send Velu, managing director, remained unanswered. Velu also owns the Trivitron Healthcare, a medical equipment manufacturer and supplier.
An email sent to Chandrasekar Kandasamy, managing partner of ePlanet Capital in India remained unanswered till the time or writing this report.
In November 2010, Medfort had raised Rs 60 crore from TVS Capital and ePlanet Capital. While TVS Capital had invested nearly Rs 50 crore for a significant minority stake, the remaining fund came from ePlanet Capital. ePlanet Capital was earlier known as ePlanet Ventures.
Seven months ago, Medfort that specialises in eye care and diabetes treatment, merged with Hyderabad-based eye care chain Maxivision Eye Hospitals. With the merger, the company now has a 12-facility eye hospital network, with presence in cities like Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Chennai, Vizag and Vijayawada.
Post-merger, all eye-care initiatives of the Medfort group were to be rebranded as Maxivision Eyecare and Maxivision Lasik Suites. Medfort hopes to help expand Maxivision’s network to 50 hospitals across 20 cities by Q3 2012.
According to the data available with the VCCEdge, the financial research platform of VCCircle, the company booked a turnover of Rs 1.87 crore for financial year 2010-11 with a loss of Rs 2.12 crore for the same period. Comparative figures for the previous years are not known since the company was established in 2010.
In another funding deal in the same space, last October, Delhi-based eye specialty hospital chain Eye-Q received an undisclosed sum in series B funding from Helion Venture Partners and Nexus Venture Partners.
Set up by leading ophthalmologist Dr Ajay Sharma and former Bausch & Lomb honcho Rajat Goel, Eye-Q is a 16-centre super-specialty hospital with presence in Delhi-NCR, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Gujarat. In May 2010, the company had raised series A funding from SONG Investment Advisors – a fund owned and managed by the Soros Economic Development Fund, Omidyar Network and Google.
