NephroPlus to hire 2,000 people by year end

Hyderabad: Amid the buzz about layoffs and salary cuts, Hyderabad-based dialysis services provider

NephroPlus

, which operates 203 dialysis centres across the country, has firmed up plans to ramp up to 250 centres and hire over 2,000 people by 2020 end, a top company official told TOI.

Nephroplus, which currently has over 2460 beds across 120 cities in 20 states, also recently bagged a public private partnership (PPP) project in Bihar for setting up 20 dialysis centres over the next two months, NephroPlus founder & CEO, Vikram Vuppala, said.

“While the country is going through the Covid-19 crisis, dialysis cannot stop. For Bihar and all over India, with the 7-8% attrition we are seeing due to Covid-19 concerns among staff as well as our growth plans, we need to continue to hire a lot of people, primarily clinical staff (technicians and nurses). We are planning to hire over 2000 dialysis technicians by year end,” Vuppala said.

This despite a 10-15% revenue impact due to a nearly 25% increase in costs, including supply chain costs and rising Heparin prices, Vuppala explained.

The domestic expansion plans come even as NephroPlus has put its international ambitions on hold due to the Covid-19 outbreak. It had raised $45 million from Bahrain’s Investcorp in November last year to fuel growth plans, which included foraying into Middle East and South East Asia.

“We were about to launch a few centres in Jakarta, Indonesia but due to the Covid-19 shock and travel embargo, we took a conscious call to wait for 3-6 months to allow the cloud of uncertainty to clear. We and our JV partner realised that this crisis situation is not the right time to kick off the foray,” he said.

As part of growth plans, NephroPlus also plans to expand the footprint of its Enpidia Training Academy, which was launched in 2012 to churn out dialysis technicians, from the existing 11 centres to around 26 through the franchisee route.

“Being a niche healthcare segment, dialysis does not have many qualified technicians. As the country faces a dearth of trained dialysis technicians, we train potential technicians through Enpidia, which provides theoretical knowledge and practical training. Once they graduate, we hire them at our centres,” he explained.