Disrupting Medicine Delivery

MEDdelivery began operations in 2017 with a B2C business model, servicing customers who needed medicines. “We observed that the medical shops have a very unorganised supply chain which is why they have major fulfilment issues, i.e. higher than 33 per cent of the demand bounces. That is how we found our problem and our solution was to create a firm infrastructure, bringing everyone onto one platform,” recalls Aastha Dusad, Co-Founder & CEO, MEDdelivery. 

Dusad describes the problem as information asymmetry, where no one is working in a coherent or connected manner. The firm has therefore, created a shared infrastructure, enabling all players in the medicine delivery business, who had hitherto been working in silos, to now operate through it. A major challenge the firm faced were that legacy players like the hyperlocal distributors, were not revealing their database. “There is a lot of information asymmetry and there is no single medicine database in the country,” laments Dusad. “Hence, we have developed it inhouse using semantics, machine learning algorithms, and using our shared infrastructure, we have created a system in which we handle the complexities at our end, while the retailer gets a seamless experience,” she says.

The firm plans to enter 20 more non-metro cities within the next 18 months and empower 50,000 more medicine shops with its procurement technology. It intends to increase the accessibility of generic brands and D2C brands to enhance the bottom line of medical stores. 

A lot of big players in the medicine delivery business have only four to five per cent market share, implying a huge opportunity for more firms to grow. “There are around 10,000 plus different companies who are manufacturing in the pharma products in varied forms of setups but they don’t have direct access to the market. A lot of entrepreneurs are coming up who are now manufacturing generic medicine. We are going to be the empowering platform for such companies to grow,” says Dussad.

Speaking about the firm’s long-term plans, she says that more than 80 per cent of its customers are repeat buyers. “With this engagement and the database that we have, we want to bring brands on board with us including generic and D2C brands so that they can launch their products on our platform. We are digitising this enabling performance marketing for them to make data-backed decisions,” says Dusad.

“I head investment relations and the growth and strategy of the company,” she says. The firm’s mission is to improve the information asymmetry in the supply chain and empower hyper-local procurements. The company intends to remain a third party that manages the interactions of players in the business and their trade. “We don’t want to become a manufacturer or distributer or retailer, we don’t want to become a stakeholder of the supply chain,” clarifies Dusad.