Apollo146;s twin

Onkar S. Kanwar seems to have developed new love for services. The tyre tycoon, after his much-talked-about foray into the online lottery business a couple of years back, is currently busy with another diversification plan. This time its, predictably, healthcare. The tycoon has floated a new company, Artemis Health Sciences Ltd AHSL for this. Kanwar has quite a diversified healthcare business portfolio in mind. Artemis will start with a 500-bed multi-specialty hospital for Rs 250 crore in Gurgaon with plans to enter medical R038;D, clinical research and medical education later on. The hospital would specialize in Cardio-Thoracic and Musculo-Skeletal diseases. Over the coming 18 months, the tycoon will be pumping in Rs 145 crore into the project. Kanwar even has plans to set up a medical college near Sonepat in Haryana and for this he is looking to collaborate with the University of Miami. Interestingly, the former FICCI President has been quite perceptive about the name of the new project Artemis, which means Apollo8217;s twin sister! By launching AHSL as a subsidiary of an existing listed company Premier Tyres is listed in the Mumbai and Kochi stock exchanges, Kanwar will even be able to access the capital market as and when he needs funds which he will, for expanding his multi-specialty hospital to other cities.

Consulting to consolidate

Venugopal Dhoot8217;s Videocon Industries is in a consolidation mode. After creating ripples in the durable industry with mega acquisitions like Thomson their picture tube business and Electrolux AB their Indian operations, he went onto merge his two business arms 8211; Videocon Industries and Videocon International. But the tycoon soon realized that he had moved too fast to complete these moves, and hadn8217;t had enough time to see to it that the entities merged smoothly and created the right synergies. Now he has hired consultants Deloitte to advise him on the scope for operational synergies between the merged entities. But Dhoot, it seems, is not yet through with his acquisition efforts. The grapevine has it that the tycoon is preparing to buy out Matsushita8217;s 70 per cent stake in the Matsushita- Videocon Washing Machine JV in Pune in which he holds the rest 30 per cent stake. The JV has a capacity to manufacture one-lakh washing machines per annum. Also high on the tycoon8217;s agenda is resurrecting the refrigerator brands in his kitty8212;Kelvinator and Allwyn. The consumer durable baron, who is also a Parliamentarian, has a diversified biz portfolio. He recognizes its time for consolidation and resurgence of brands that have great histories but have been languishing on the sidelines for far too long.

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