HARSHAD REDDY is a sports buff who runs and cycles regularly, something he finds meditative. An avid supporter of Manchester United, Harshad has run a few half marathons, with a long-term goal of the Boston Marathon. In 2014, Harshad set up Apollo Hospitals’ home-care enterprise, but one of his bigger achievements has been the Apollo Proton Cancer Centre (APCC) in Chennai, the first such facility in South Asia and West Asia, in 2019. Even today, the only other entity to have a similar facility in the region is Mumbai’s Tata Memorial Centre. In proton therapy, there is no entry or exit load from the radiation. Essentially, it ensures it does not radiate non-cancerous tissues
“We were literally putting in a cyclotron, a nuclear reactor in the middle of Chennai, something that the country hadn’t seen before. Therefore, it took a while for regulators to understand the requirements,” says Harshad. Getting approvals from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board itself took two years.
Set up at a cost of ₹1,250 crore, APCC has treated over 400 patients with proton beam therapy last year, even from far away New Zealand and Chile. Earning from APPC during FY23 was ₹220 crore, followed by ₹264 crore in FY24. Harshad hopes to bring more cutting-edge technologies to India. Recently it launched ZAP-X, a gyroscopic radiotherapy platform to treat brain tumours at the Indraprastha Apollo Hospital in Delhi. — Anup Jayaram