Lokesh lays foundation for AIG’s ₹2,000 crore, 1,000-bed Vizag hospital

IT and Human Resources Development Minister Nara Lokesh on Monday, 31 August 2026, laid the foundation stone with AIG Hospitals chairman Dr D. Nageshwar Reddy for a 1,000-bed greenfield hospital and healthcare ecosystem at Yendada in Visakhapatnam. The investment is pegged at ₹2,000 crore over five years, with about 9,000 jobs expected when the campus is fully operational.

The land split is part of the public plan: a hospital on nine acres and a nursing college on 2.5 acres, with paramedic training, a research laboratory, an artificial-intelligence centre and an academic block in the wider ecosystem. Delivery is phased. Phase-1 covers Towers A and B with 650 beds and a target of October 2028. Phase-2 adds Tower C with 350 more beds. Outpatient capacity is projected at about 5,000 patients a day across more than fifty specialities.

Lokesh used the foundation ceremony to restate a governing priority. He said the government would give greater weight to education and healthcare, that he had chosen education because societal change runs through it, and that doctors are a visible form of God — a phrase he tied to sacrifices during COVID. He praised Reddy as a Visakhapatnam native and cast the project as part of making Vizag a healthcare destination and a city of the future inside a trillion-dollar regional ambition.

The guest list underlined the local political ownership of the pitch: Assembly Speaker Ch. Ayyanna Patrudu, MP M. Sribharat, Bheemili MLA Ganta Srinivasa Rao, and AIG and district officials. For patients in north coastal Andhra who still travel to Hyderabad or Chennai for complex care, a 1,000-bed campus with teaching and research attached is a material promise — if the October 2028 Phase-1 date holds.

This cutting keeps the numbers tight to the tip: ₹2,000 crore, 1,000 beds, 9,000 jobs, nine plus 2.5 acres, 650 then 350 beds, 5,000 OPD patients a day, fifty-plus specialities, October 2028 for Phase-1. It does not invent tariff schedules, speciality-wise bed maps, or a completion claim beyond the phased targets. In a separate Health cutting from the same Vizag tour, Lokesh spoke of finishing AIG in two years; the project note here remains October 2028 for Phase-1. Both statements are recorded in their own places without forced reconciliation. Large private hospital campuses change a city’s medical geography only when referral pathways, ambulance access and teaching seats open on time. Yendada’s nine-acre hospital footprint and 2.5-acre nursing college are designed for that full stack. Between foundation stone and October 2028 Phase-1, the public markers to watch are environmental clearances already presumed in the plan, tower-wise construction pace, and whether the 5,000-patient daily OPD claim is matched by transport links from north coastal districts that currently leak patients to Hyderabad.