Since it was launched five years ago, Apollo 24/7, the digital vertical of India’s largest hospital chain, has been a money pit, driving down the profitability of the parent. Now, though, it may have found a tonic for its bruised bottom line: a paid customer loyalty programme called Apollo Circle.  

In FY25, Apollo 24/7 earned Rs 3,000 crore, a growth of 8% over FY24. It boasts 40 million registered users, 800,000 active users, 15,000 consultations, and 60,000 medicine orders per day. A quarter of the users pay an annual subscription fee of Rs 299 for such benefits as free tele-consultation, priority doctor access, and discounted medication and laboratory tests. 

Apollo Circle is already the country’s largestBusiness StandardApollo Pharmacy to add 2 stores a day to its network for next 5 years paid healthcare loyalty programme. To Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Limited, however, it’s more than just a potential cash cow. It’s the rope that pulls the customer to its extensive stable of businesses—hospital, pharmacy, diagnostics, dialysis, mother and child care—which, a healthcare industry veteran says, “have been carved out as individual, lean, asset-light verticals over decades”. 

The idea is the same as any subscription business. “Once you pay for a membership, you are invested in buying all your upcoming medicines and tests from Apollo,” explains the veteran, who, like most people The Ken spoke with, asked not to be named. “You want to get your money’s worth by cashing in on the discounts and free medicine delivery.”

Apollo 24/7 is still losing money—Rs 480 crore in FY24—but it has staunched the bleeding enough to enable Apollo Health Co, the subsidiary that oversees both Apollo’s digital vertical and its network of 6,626 pharmacies, to turn a profit of Rs 47 crore in FY25, despite a loss of Rs 196 crore in the previous fiscal. 

Now the goal is for Apollo 24/7 to break even next year, Suneeta Reddy, the Apollo managing director who leads strategy for the parent company’s digital business, said in the FY26 Q1 earnings call.

That’s only part of it, though. The company, according to an emailed statement to The Ken, wants the loyalty programme to “drive repeat transactions within the Apollo continuum of care”.