India Real Estate Link

Fortis Healthcare Ltd has a strategy to build hospitals with real estate giant Emaar MGF Land Ltd and DLF Ltd appear to be going nowhere amid Fortis’ concerns over the sites that were proposed by both builders.
Fortis had signed a memorandum of agreement with DLF in January last year to set up fifteen hospitals in townships being developed by the builder.
Mr. Shivinder Mohan Singh, chief executive officer of Fortis, said, “We are still working on setting up projects,” . Further he added, “But the questions is where and how many, and is it appetising enough? I think it is basically an issue of site selection for DLF and I guess in the current market this is not a priority for DLF.”
The number of hospitals is also down to four after Fortis found that most of the sites presented by DLF didn’t have much consumer or commercial appeal. Mr. Singh said that they realised that most of these township hospitals were not feasible. Further he added that they are told by their developer that out of the thirty sites, only four or five will work.
On an earlier occasion, DLF spokesman Mr. Sanjey Roy had maintained that the agreement with Fortis was on track and the hospitals would be set up once DLF starts work on its townships.
Emaar MGF also has an MOU with Fortis to develop hospitals in emerging real estate cities. Emaar plans to develop twenty-five hospitals with a capacity ranging from seventy-five to one-hundread-twenty-five beds over next decade. Mr. Singh said, “The agreement with Emaar is in a JV format and I am not aware of any dialogue with them in the last few months”.
Further Mr. Singh said, “We realized it’s not doable”. “The sites were too far, I mean you have a campus coming up at Manesar, what will I do with that?” Singh says half of the sites presented had to be rejected.