Ques. Why have you decided to not go ahead with the IPO?

I think there are a couple of factors first and foremost, I think the companies on a very different and rapidly evolving trajectory while our companies had tremendous amount of growth for these last few years and we've grown more than 50% consistently we believe that going ahead the focus of the company must be on growth as well as profitability and we believe that within the next 12 months as the nearest and EBITDA Breakeven might be a much better time for us to tap the capital markets. I think most importantly we're proud of the fact that we are Mr Aditya Puri as our chairman I think he has one of the keenest years and the keenest understandings of how things are and where things should be so our focus is on growth as well as profitability and we are fairly confident that within the next 12 to 15 months the company will get to ebitda break even at which point of time we can come to the markets with the proposition of a company that is not really just growing phenomenally in the sector but also one that is ebitda Break Even.

Ques. Do You have a requisite capital to grow in future?

The capital buffer that we have in the company that was reportedly taken by the company around 300 million dollars from Goldman Sachs so there's a clarification yes 300 million dollars did come from Goldman size but it's a combination of 200 million dollars of straight debt and 100 million dollars of preference convertible Equity or a preference loan as we would call that right. So yes we have already received a cash infusion within the company and with the proposed rights issue that the company is going to undertake we will have enough and more Capital buffer to ensure that we are well set on our path and this trajectory of growth with profitability will definitely be seen the number performance very soon.

Ques. How is business because you know a lot of Diagnostics talks have also been suffering because the COVID Tailwind is gone?

So look I think it's very important to understand that as a group as API Holdings our business involves multiple things predominantly a large part of our Revenue comes from the sale of products which is either medicines or OTC products or devices a part a fair part of our Revenue also comes from Services which includes Diagnostics consultations and so on and so forth. Now as part of the overall Revenue mix if you look at the business as a whole FY22 vis-a-vis FY21 we've grown our net revenue and what I mean by net revenues is revenue recognised on the books of the company i.e. Net of taxes the point I'm trying to make is that our business is very resilient there are certain Pockets which will grow for example like you said at the time of COVID your testing will grow up but at that time the consumption of let's say acute medicines comes down in normal times let's say the consumption of acute medicine goes up your regular Wellness test goes up and testing comes down so our business is fairly resilient and has a wide portfolio of Revenue which ensures on the whole on aggregate the business continues to grow right.

Ques. When you look at the results or what the other players have been saying from a Dr. Lal to SRL all of them the business and margins are going down?

We are trying to compare the revenue of a segment of what we do yeah the pharmacy piece and overall right because as API Holdings we are a company that is involved predominantly across sale of  medicines and provision of services right so I think it would be unfair to pick up part of our business and compare it to somebody else's business versus the right way to visualize a business is a combination of sale of medicines and services and on the whole we are growing more north of 50 percent year on year and the benefit of that is like I said I mean otherwise to take your cross selling and otherwise what should have happened is in the year of COVID we should have grown to 200 and the next day we've grown 30% and the next 20% because inherently the business has several modes and several advantages and in a lot of ways several Hedges also that some business will grow faster somebody will grow slower but on a aggregate basis we are still growing at a extremely rapid Pace right so I think the right proxy is to look at how is outpatient Healthcare growing and outpatient Healthcare has been growing 12 to 15% every year versus our growth for the past three years consistently has been 50%.

Ques. Now the other thing I want to ask you the competition is rising the COVID may not be there which you're saying you're not worried about but competition is rising you've got TATA 1 mg I think all of us have seen those ads for 100 rupee tests right we're talking about disruption prices Flipkart has Grand plans we know Reliance has done what it has done via acquisition networks, Amazon wants to be in the diagnostic place. You said Pharmeasy wants to be in healthcare the fact is you will be the least capitalised out of all the names that have thrown at you how are you going to manage the competition?

Look I think our inherent focus is our consumers internet focus is our business and what we can do to serve these consumers extremely profitably and how we can continue to grow in our market right. I think the beauty of it is the entire Healthcare Market is an exceptionally large Market. I always look at the advice of Mr Puri where he says that there is room not just for HDFC bank but then there is the ICICI Bank and then there is Kotak Bank and there is Bajaj finance and there is SBI and there is so many more right at last count there are 100 plus large companies which have a balancing north of  billion dollars if I'm not wrong in their financial services space so there is room for so many and more right. I don't think we are living in a world where there's going to be one player who's going to take everything I think our strategy remains are consumers our retailers our partners our doctors and how we can provide the best of outpatient Healthcare to them in a single platform right and I think there is room for enough and more people to continue to come and not just survive but Thrive. This cross-selling was I mean idea of Aditya Puri, he’s known to provide everything that we need to give to the consumers at one place and he keeps on reemphasising that the focus of our platform is to provide everything in outpatient Health Care holistic health care and not just more importantly in urban areas but in semi-urban and Rural India also right I'm very proud to say that through our network of thyrocare we have a presence in 280 districts of India so 70% of a country's population can get access to a diagnostic test request it, get their sample drawn, get the sample flown into the laboratory habit process and get a result in under 24 hours or that our platform can now deliver medicines in every single habitable zip code of India right.

Ques. What is your market share?

I think it's you know it's almost like beauty is in the eyes of the beholder somebody can look at the market share as part of the digital ecosystem, somebody can look at it as part of just the pharmacy ecosystem, we would prefer to look at our market share as a part of the overall outpatient Healthcare ecosystem right because we straddle across outpatient Healthcare in information consultation Diagnostics and treatment today. The outpatient Healthcare Market is at least 60 billion dollars plus right so we are still a small insignificant less than two percent of the overall market right and there is so much of Headroom for us to continue to grow now so are you where are you in the pecking order of all of the big names that we talk about when it comes to outpatient care from the organized space so again I think there are like I said very different ways to evaluate market size because in terms of Diagnostics obviously, we have Dr lals, Metropolis who are significantly large in terms of market cap and revenues, and we are significantly larger in terms of the samples that we do and the number ofprocesses that we do, I think there are other companies that are doing a very good job in terms of retail pharmacies right, which we don't have there are some companies are very good in distribution right so I don't think it's fair to do apples to apple comparison because what we are doing is are significantly I would say integrated horizontal outpatient Healthcare platform which is giving holistic care and a lot of these platforms are doing a great job in their respective verticals right so unfair to compare us with them.

Ques. Do you mean to suggest that you won't engage in the price battle that began these 100 rupee tests when you say it's not apples, it's apples and oranges?

Look I think thyrocare has always championed the cause of being one of the most affordable diagnosis B2B labs in India right so I think the prices at which thyrocare does its test and the prices that it offers to its partners and through them to the consumers are already very competitive right so I think that the way we are just around 100 rupees it's yes it's in that zip code it's doing very well and at that price all I can say is that you know the numbers of thyrocare are there for everybody to say it's already very profitable right so we believe that at an affordable price at large volumes like the way our backend does we're able to create a platform that's extremely robust and profitable and growing extremely well.

Ques. You know you have Mr Vidya puri's advice all the time with you did you consider more Acquisitions at one time you were on a serious shopping spree and now you want to sit on it?

I think there is a time to acquire, I think there's a time to consolidate, all of our Acquisitions were done with an intent of building our platform score capabilities right and we said that even when we were chatting last year Diagnostics was one of the missing pieces of our core capability right which we would have taken a very long period of time to build out which we did right but I think we're now extremely well set and like I said everything in outpatient Healthcare information consultation Diagnostics and treatment we now have a very robust very large platform across the board and we hope that now our job much more is on integrating this even more and more closer and giving that as a single offering to the consumer versus now figuring out about a new offering at this point of time yeah because you know at the end of the day a patient would have a prescription right and whatever the doctor's instructions were on the app so you already have them and that's the cross-selling. So we want we want there to be a single place where you can come and say okay I want a consultation with the doctor my medical records to be stored, I can get a diagnostic test, I need a OTC product, I can get my medicines, I can get my refills, I get my reminders, all of it right and that is the focus and Genesis of it right it's almost like in HDFC Bank your one relationship manager will take care of everything for you right we want to be that partner for holistic healthcare for you it's a good line yeah.

Ques. You withdraw the DRHP until you see profitability what can we expect have you started using your own cash ?

I still think we have a pretty Healthy Growth and marketing budget but I think the company's Focus always I mean even when we had filed the DRHP if you look at our DRHP we had said that we are contribution margin positive yeah which means on every order or at an operational level we were making money yeah the focus was how fast can you scale those orders so that the profit we make from those orders is enough to take care of the cost we've reprioritized the business to focus on orders that are more and more profitable or services that are more and more profitable all activities that are more and more profitable and therefore we believe that going down the same path that we had laid down in the time of IPO we're just accelerating that and therefore we'll get to break even within 12 months so I think what you can expect from us over the next 12 months is the company that continues to have a significant focus on growth.

Ques. Are founders selling Shares?

We are not shutting down, we are not going to reduce our growth, exactly right I think I've heard but I want everything from the fact that you know Founders are running away or Founders are selling shares or Founders are going away I heard you're selling thyroid care also yeah so none of that is true. The founders have not sold one single share from the time we file the DRHP and we don't intend to sell any shares as a matter of fact we are considering putting some of our own money. There's another rumour in fact certain Publications printed that the founders removed close to 48 million dollars or the Senior Management got 48 million dollars from the company as a bonus I just want to clarify that the founders and Senior Management got that bonus linked to Performance initiatives that were agreed years in advance number one. Number two, all the money that the founders and Senior Management got every single rupee was reinvested back into the company so it wasn't like we got 50 million dollars and took home 50 million dollars, we got 50 million dollars reinvested the whole 50 million dollars in fact while we were doing this some of our team members said even we want to invest so our other team members invested another 10 million dollars so on a net net basis the Senior Management got 48 million dollars and invested 60 million dollars back into the company. We are considering infusing some of our own money even today even right now as a part of our rights issue because we are extremely confident about what we are doing.

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Credits: ETNow