On the morning of 14 August, the board of directors of hospital chain Fortis Healthcare Limited (FHL) gathered in the company’s corporate office in Gurugram’s Unitech Business Park. The long third-floor boardroom they assembled in overlooks the elevated metro rail corridor that cuts across the heart of the National Capital Region (NCR). Unlike in times gone by though, no trains whizzed by. The Covid-19 pandemic had long since taken them off the rails.
The board passed six resolutions in quick succession, all signed off on by Ashutosh Raghuvanshi, the hospital chain’s managing director and chief executive officer.
What's in a name
Fortis Healthcare’s (re)brand identity crisis
India’s second largest private healthcare chain wants to scrub its well-known branding entirely. Behind the move is a story of dubious promoters, shady licence agreements, and a company in flux
Fortis wants to rebrand itself to Parkway because it does not own its branding. Instead, the Fortis brands are owned by the ex-promoters of the company, the Singh brothers
The Singh brothers, currently lodged in Tihar Jail, want to sell these brands to pay off their dues to Japanese drug maker Daiichi. Daiichi, too, wants to sell these to recover what is owed
Fortis' new management, installed by Malaysian investor IHH, is trying to avert such a situation by pre-emptively rebranding
The changes aren't just cosmetic, the last two years have been an uphill struggle to revive a company that was on the brink of calamity
