https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/trends/health-trends/ambulance-operator-ziqitza-plans-to-raise-40-million-from-pe-investors-3289071.html

Viswanath Pilla
Moneycontrol News

India's second-largest emergency medical services provider Ziqitza Healthcare is planning to raise around $40 million from private equity investors.

The company said it is in talks with investors from India and abroad, and is looking to close the deal by April 2019.

Ziqitza runs 108 emergency ambulances, 102 ambulances to transport pregnant women and mobile medical units (MMU) in seven states under public private partnership model.

The company also operates pay-for-use private ambulance service under dial 1298, in addition to providing outsourced ambulance fleets to hospitals and corporates.
Currently Ziqitza operates across 16 states in India and recently launched a private ambulance service in UAE.

The company, which started operations in 2005 raised two rounds of funding so far. In 2007 it raised Rs 7 crore from US-based Acumen Fund and further $3 million in 2010 from Acumen, IDFC and True North.

The company plans to use the proceeds of proposed fund raise for setting up 108, 102 and MMU operations in more states, grow pay-for-use and ambulance outsourcing services; and expand operations in Gulf region.

Ziqitza operates around 3,200 ambulances and employs about 9100 people. It owns more than a one-third of the ambulances, the rest were given by the government or taken on lease from third parties. The company is also allowing private owners to operate their ambulances using its platform on lines of cab hailing services Ola and Uber.

"We are growing at 30-40 percent per year," said Manish Sacheti, Chief Financial Officer and co-founder of Ziqitza.

"There will be lot of working capital requirement to fund the growth," Sacheti added.

Sacheti expects Ziqitza to end FY19 with Rs 450 crore revenues and for FY20 he says the company is targeting Rs 700 crore.

The growth will be primarily driven by company winning new PPP contracts from state governments. Many of them including UP, Karnataka, West Bengal, Jammu & Kashmir, among others will be coming up with tenders to select vendors to operate emergency medical services in their respective states.

Ziqitza competes with Hyderabad-based GVK-EMRI and Pune-based BVG in tenders. GVK-EMRI is by far the biggest emergency medical services company in India.