GE Health sees India sales doubling to $1 billion

GE Healthcare, the medical equipment major, is aiming to more than double its revenues from the Indian market in five years.

V Raja, president and CEO, GE Healthcare India, said the company wants to reach over $1 billion in revenues from India by 2015 from $400 million now.

“We will try to reach out to more and more Tier II and III towns in India to increase our presence,” said Raja, adding that GE Healthcare is currently growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 30%.

The company is planning to reach its goal by developing and selling products customised to suit the requirements in different towns.

“We have to customise products like CT scan, MRI machine, etc. Clinically and functionally the product remains same. Only additional features which are not clinically needed are changed. Costs for the same product can range from $500-6000 depending on added frills. For example, for ECG we have a machine with no frills attached to suit markets like Bareilly, while machines carrying attachments like displays are specifically targeted at the metros,” said Raja.

Healthcare experts say customising products to suit different pockets is the need of the hour for medical equipment manufacturers who intend to grow quickly in the $40 billion healthcare market in India.

Ankur Bharti, consultant, Technopak, said it is not easy to sell high-end equipment, which carry heavy installation and operational charges, in India.

“All hospitals in every town do not need a 64-slice CT scan machine. But by customising the product, you not only decrease unwanted expenditure, but can scale up rapidly and sell more,” said Bharti.

Raja said currently GE covers about 250-300 districts in India directly and indirectly through its distributors, and is looking at tapping the remaining 100-150 districts.

Secondly, to grow its bandwidth, the company plans to scout new emerging technologies developed by engineers and scientists who find it hard to bring them to the market on their own.

Raja said GE would either nurture good technologies which have a strategic fit with their line of business and bring them to the market, or buy them out outright, or provide the scientists with support and partnership to scale up the technologies.

“We may even license the technology, improvise it, take it to the market and pay a licensing fee to the person who developed it.”
According to a healthcare expert working with a US-based medical device manufacturer, when technologies invented by scientists from small towns or those without major financial support grow to carry the stamp of GE or Siemens or Phillips, they become more acceptable and gain instant recognition.

“So, it helps the inventor in taking his technology and helping it reach across the market which he could not have done on his own, while on the other hand a player like GE or Phillips gets the benefit of a new addition to his portfolio,” said the healthcare expert.