Mumbai: Apollo Hospitals has planned a massive Rs710-crore expansion programme, involving the setting up of a multi-speciality hospital in Mumbai and an orthopaedic hospital in Chennai.

The group would invest around Rs600 crore for its Mumbai expansion. Apollo is in the process of finalising and acquiring land in Navi Mumbai, Thane, South Mumbai and Nashik, Preetha Reddy, managing director, Apollo Hospitals, said.

Apollo would also be setting up an orthopaedic hospital in north Chennai with 200 beds at an investment of about Rs110 crore, she said.

"We have tied up with western hospitals in Mumbai and will set up centres of excellence at various places. Each hospital will have 250-300 beds each," Reddy said on the sidelines of a conference on the ''Save a Child''s Heart'' initiative.

Reddy said the group would soon start work on construction of hospitals in Ahmedabad, Vishakapatnam and Bhubaneshwar.

The consultancy division of Apollo would also soon foray into Khazakhstan and Turkey , with details of the tie-up for the latter almost finalised.

Apollo is targeting the 10,000 bed mark by 2010. "Currently we have about 8,000 beds, both through tie-ups and our own. We expect our turnover to reach Rs1,200 crore by the end of this year," she said.

The group is also planning to set up two schools and colleges of nursing coming up at Madurai and Chennai by the end of the year, she said.