Shubham Saroj
Just fill a Prescription Form and start ordering medicines from PharmEasy
Introduction – PharmEasy is a health tech startup offering services such as tele-consultation, medicine deliveries, and diagnostic test sample collections.
It also operates an online pharmacy that helps patients connect with local pharmacy stores and diagnostic centers in order to fulfill their extensive medical needs. PharmEasy was founded in 2015 by Dharmil Sheth, Mikhil Innani, and Dhaval Shah as a subsidiary of Ascent Health.
Early Days – Dharmil Sheth, the founder of PharmEasy, and his doctor pal Dhawal Shah came up with the idea of building an online pharmacy. And this is how PharmEasy came into existence in the year 2014. Presently, the company delivers to nearly 98% of the Indian pin codes.
The company wanted to achieve the mission of doorstep delivery of everything related to healthcare. And it has now successfully accomplished this objective. Digitization has become an integral component of India’s healthcare industry.
Be it scheduling a doctor’s appointment or delivery of reports and medicines, every step in the industry has been digitized. It’s quite tough to remember to refill every month, especially in the case of chronic diseases. Hence, they have launched a subscription service.
PharmEasy’s subscription service not only ensures that you are reminded of your refills but also makes sure that you are never out on your medical essentials. You will get a reminder every month and your order will be delivered at your convenience!
PharmEasy is amongst one of India’s top online pharmacy and medical care platforms. It enables you to order pharmaceutical and healthcare products online by connecting you to registered retail pharmacies and get them delivered to your home. We are an online medical store, making your purchase easy, simple, and affordable!
Marketing Strategy – PharmEasy markets itself as a brand where you can get all the medicines under one roof. There are several instances where people have go from one pharmacy to another in the search of the desired medicines only to find that they are unavailable.
Hence, you must use PharmEasy to get medicines that might be unavailable in the pharmacies near you but PharmEasy will never disappoint you. They also claim to give 20% discounts on various medicines that are associated to diseases like diabetes and blood pressure.
This discount helps the people who are suffering from various diseases as it can burn your pocket if you have to consume these medicines on a daily basis.
User Base & Valuation – According to PharmEasy, they have served more than 5,000,000 families, delivered more than 1.5 crores orders, served more than 22,000 Pin codes and they have more than 100,000 medicines available in their facility. Their android app has been downloaded more than 10 million times which is quite an achievement in itself.
PharmEasy’s valuation shot up $1.8 billion after a secondary transaction from Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital. Later PharmEasy, which about a fortnight ago acquired diagnostic chain Thyrocare, closed its Series F funding round at $500 million. The round then valued PharmEasy parent API Holdings at $4 billion, according to the co-founder and CEO Siddharth Shah.
Funding – PharmEasy has raised a total of $1.2 billion in funding over 10 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Jul 7, 2021 from a Series F round. PharmEasy is funded by a total of 33 investors. Think Investments and B Capital Group are the most recent investors. Some of their other investors are as follows:-
- Temasek Holdings
- Kotak Realty Fund
- Prosus Ventures
- TPG Growth
- Orios Venture Partners
- InnoVen Capital
Revenues & Losses – PharmEasy, India’s largest online pharmacy, has nearly doubled its revenue in FY20 to Rs 637 crore although its losses also increased during the same period, according to documents viewed by Moneycontrol.
PharmEasy’s trading entity, run by Thea Technologies Pvt. Ltd, earned Rs 637 crore in FY20 – compared to Rs 340 crore in FY19, according to its unaudited financial statements. Its losses before tax for the period also doubled to Rs 100.7 crore from Rs 50 crore a year earlier.
The FY20 numbers, ending March 31, only factor in a small portion of the coronavirus lockdown while the last six months have been a busy time for the industry amid fundraises, acquisitions and orders going through the roof.
Compared to other online pharmacies, at least on paper, PharmEasy has been able to keep its cash burn and losses in check. A loss of Rs 100 crore on revenue of Rs 640 crore of revenue is better compared to rivals Medlife (which PharmEasy is acquiring) and Sequoia Capital-backed 1mg for FY19.
Medlife’s revenue grew 165% to Rs 363 crore, on a loss of Rs 404 crore, while 1mg more than doubled to Rs 240 crore in FY19, while losses also almost doubled to Rs 170 crore.
Acquisitions – They have acquired 2 startups which are as follows:-
- Medlife in 2020
- Thyrocare Technologies in 2021
Controversy – PharmEasy was caught in a controversy when a TV commercial was aired on Star Sports. Advertisement depicts a scene from Ramayan, where Shri Lakshan is struck by a bunch of arrows and falls unconscious.
Then a Sage asks Shriram to bring ayurvedic medicines from Himalaya. Then Shriram asks “who will get medicines from such a long distance?” Then 2 people from PharmEasy arrive on a scooter and hand over medicines to Shriram.
At this time, a voice says get medicines home delivered online and then everyone is showed dancing on a song promoting PharmEasy. With this advertisement, the startup was alleged that it has hurt religious sentiments of millions of Hindus, just for the sake of marketing.
Then some Hindus started calling for the Boycott of their app through social media. This was a major controversy for the startup.
Future Plans – They might file for an IPO in 2022 if everything’s goes well for them.
Conclusion – Healthcare has become one of India’s largest sectors, both in terms of wealth and employment. The healthcare sector in India is forecasted to reach $372 Billion by 2022. Due to this growth in the healthcare sector, many HealthTech startups have emerged in the Indian Startup Ecosystem.
Among those HealthTech startups, one is PharmEasy. They are going strong as of now but since they face tough competition from startups like Netmeds, it’s highly unlikely to say which startup will ultimately win the battle of online pharmacy.
We have to wait for some more years to see which startup will come out as the winner. Until then all we can do is hope that they file for an IPO in the future.
