Could you talk more about your Q1 earnings, especially the segmental breakup between Covid and non-Covid?
Q1 was characterised by two events; one was a very low base of last year because of the nationwide lockdown and second was a very high instance of Covid-19 infection in the April and May months of this year. This led us to record a revenue of about 607 crores. Yes, there was a lot of Covid business as well which came in this quarter but the good news is that our non-Covid revenues also grew about 3% sequentially vis-à-vis the last quarter of the last financial year. So, on the whole, we are very happy with what we have achieved on the non Covid side as well. This quarter saw us serving 7.1 million patient visits, and of this about 11.4 lakh RT-PCR tests were conducted. This was possible because of our large pan India network of laboratories and collection centres which have now been tech enabled to be able to serve the patients in a very seamless fashion.
We look forward to strengthening our south and west business. We have announced a launch of a new reference lab at a pilot phase in Bengaluru this quarter and we have started off with new six satellite labs in the region across six different cities. That is something which we are trying to build upon as we go forward into the future. So overall, this quarter was very operationally intense, there was a very big surge in the Covid testing volumes and this led a lot of operational stress on the system with a lot of home collection requests being made, material shortage etc, but the team did a good job of overcoming all these challenges to deliver a record number of 607 crores.
How do you expect things to normalise going ahead, the Covid business will of course fall so what should be the run rate?
As you know that, we have always been talking of our focus on the non Covid business– and Covid only being an add-on service to the nation. So, in this context, as I said, our non Covid revenues grew 3% and we would like to continue this tempo and build a non Covid business across the country. We look forward to delivering coming back to normal rate of growth on the non Covid side as well. So non Covid is really the focus of what we would like to do and Covid is an add-on to serve the nation.
Will the growth in volumes actually continue if you see going ahead especially led by pan India expansion?
Our overall focus has been a volume led growth, not a price led growth. Yes, we try and optimise the mix at various points of times but our real focus is to drive the volumes up and be able to generate superior rate of growth vis-à-vis the market. We also see our south, west and east businesses skipping up now and as we expand into tier-2, tier-3, tier-4 cities even in the rest of north region, we are seeing a huge traction for our brand, our medical excellence and service excellence programs. Our focus is going to be volume led and that is what we are trying to put our network of labs and collection centres with technology so that we are able to handle and service the patients well.
