BigChemist.com, an integrated online market place for healthcare products and services, has announced plans to roll out its services in Mumbai and other key metros by March 2016. The firm said it would offer a range of medicines, health products, lab services, and all major brands under one platform. It currently home-delivers medicines at 15 per cent discount.
Started as A3T Retails Pvt Ltd in May 2013, with its brick-and-mortar chemist shop in Delhi, BigChemist.com ventured into the online space in August 2015 and has plans to ship medicines and products to almost all parts of India within 24 hours in different phases, a top company official said.
“At present, we are only catering to the NCR for medicines, but for over the counter and FMCG products, which are not covered under the drug licence, we are supplying all across the country,” said Puneet Kapoor, Director, BigChemist.com.
“By March 2016, we will have seven locations, including the three which we already have in Delhi and the NCR. Our stores will come up in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad from where we are getting maximum requests,” Mr Kapoor told The Hindu .
BigChemist’s strategy is to build an ecosystem of partner chemists and lab service providers around its own stores so that it can deliver the medicines and pathological lab services to clients from the nearest partner stores and labs. “We are not just focussing on metros, but any major city or town which is a hub where we can have a signature store or branch. We feel physical along with digital presence creates a far greater impact than just digital presence,” he said.
Since the law mandates that medicines can only be dispensed with a drug licence and a physical store, the company will have one signature store in each major city, and in and around it, will partner with local chemists to manage the distributor-supply ecosystem.
Meanwhile, the company has lined up a disease management programme, under which it will offer a complete package for a certain ailment. For this, it is partnering diagnostic labs, drug manufactures, a telephone, and a video doctor-consulting platform. It is also in the process of partnering with an instrument provider and in the last stage of creating the value proposition.
“We will be offering one-year packages to patients. There will be two kinds of consultations: one for diabetes and the other for diet and nutrition. They will get all the information on what to do, what to avoid, and how to manage weight and stress,” Mr Kapoor said.
The company has launched a mobile application through which patients can upload the image of the prescription with comments. BigChemist’s pharmacists will check the validity and availability before charting an order.
The pharmacy market in India is estimated at $15 billion and growing in double digits, but the online part is only 0.002% of the business, shared by over a dozen players. The company is planning to go for Series A funding to mobilise resources for technology and installing hardware and software at 5,000 partner stores in two years. The fund requirement is to the tune of Rs 300 crore, Mr Kapoor said.
Company plans
to go for Series A funding to mobilise resources for technology
