Metropolis Health care, a privately-held Indian pathology firm,  has affirm its interest to continue operating the Ghanaian market after a "profitable exit" from south Africa.

The management of the company announced its exit from the south African market citing lack of growth and regulatory hurdles, after  nine years of operation the  'rainbow nation.'

The promoter and managing director of the company , Ameera Shah said that the company had entered South Africa in 2007 through a partnership.

"We have sold the business there. We had two laboratories and 1,500 employees there. It was a profitable exit,"

Shah said that though SA may be a growth market for some other industries, that was not the case with pathology.she reveals.

"The market in SA is growing only at 2% for pathology. It's very consolidated and not very attractive like some of the other places that we are currently operating in. It's like working in Europe and hence not of great interest to us. Besides, it's very highly regulated. For instance, they have rules like company cannot have a pathology lab, all the pathologists have to be local board approved and so on,"

"Ghana is an interesting market and we are seeing good traction there and similar is the case in Kenya. Mauritius is small and we have just entered Zambia about 2-3 months ago, so too early to tell."

The Mumbai-based diagnostic chain Metropolis Healthcare Ltd in 2014 expanded its overseas operations by striking its second acquisition in Africa, buying Wellness Laboratories Ltd in Ghana.

Metropolis, with over 100 labs in India and overseas and 700 collection centres, is one of the largest diagnostic chains in the country. The company was founded by Sunil Shah in 1981 and went on to raise capital from ICICI Venture in 2006. In 2010, Warburg Pincus invested $85 million to buy stake in the firm around half of which went to give exit to the previous investor .