{"id":124086,"date":"2025-03-10T12:05:48","date_gmt":"2025-03-10T12:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/business\/marketing\/medicine-delivery-enters-quick-lane-but-roadblocks-remain-et-brandequity\/"},"modified":"2025-03-10T12:05:48","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T12:05:48","slug":"medicine-delivery-enters-quick-lane-but-roadblocks-remain-et-brandequity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=124086","title":{"rendered":"Medicine delivery enters quick lane but roadblocks remain, ET BrandEquity"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\"<p>Representative
Representative Image<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rapid delivery of prescription medicines is emerging as the next battleground in India\u2019s quick commerce industry with established firms such as Tata Digital<\/a>‘s 1mg<\/a> and Apollo 24\/7<\/a>, and startups vying for a share of this fast-growing market.<\/p>\n

Industry executives said while there is a strong demand for quick medicine delivery<\/a>, companies could face roadblocks, impacting aggressive expansion plans. They said the key to cracking shorter delivery timelines for medicines will be in adding physical pharmacy stores to the supply chain, which is capital intensive and comes with arduous licensing rules.<\/p>\n

“Our early pilots convinced us that faster pharmacy delivery service can fundamentally be scalable and economically viable when served through retail stores, or with close partners like BigBasket who have an existing network we can leverage in a win-win model,\u201d said Prashant Tandon, founder and CEO, 1mg. Quick commerce firm BigBasket, also backed by Tata Digital, is planning to roll out medicine deliveries this year, CEO Hari Menon said earlier.<\/p>\n

Beyond Gurugram, where 1mg is piloting the service, delivering 40 per cent of orders within a 30-minute timeline, the e-pharmacy<\/a> company has expanded to Noida, Ghaziabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Faridabad, and will be extending the service to 10 more cities in the coming months.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Apollo 24\/7 CEO Madhivanan Balakrishnan said the company is setting up micro warehouses within existing pharmacies instead of opening dark stores. Apollo has started 19-minute delivery service to Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Bengaluru.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresently, 60 per cent of the orders are completed within 19 minutes in the cities where the service is available. We envisage to be able to deliver over 90 per cent of the orders in these cities within the same day soon,\u201d Balakrishnan said. \u201cGoing by the current trends, we expect 30 per cent of the pharma orders in these cities will go digital,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Several new startups, focused on specific markets across the country, are also taking the omnichannel route.<\/p>\n

Bengaluru-based Plazza, founded by former Zomato executive Aman Priyadarshi, opened its first store in the city last November, with plans to add 10 more over the next three to four months. Y Combinator-backed Farmako has taken a similar strategy of going deeper within Gurugram and Delhi.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a full-stack player and have our own stores, inventory and logistics. We have 15,000 SKUs (stock-keeping units). Our pharmacies are like a Lenskart store; you can buy from the store or order online,\u201d Priyadarshi told ET.<\/p>\n

Old problems, new avatar<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hurdles around effective scaling up of online medicine delivery, which plagued larger firms, are expected to continue with many companies attempting faster fulfilment of orders.<\/p>\n

Executives pointed out that faster delivery of medicines in a compliant manner is a challenging task requiring deep domain knowledge and systems that are capable of handling complexities related to the category.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is important to know the details here\u2014medicines come under various schedules\u2014and there can be multiple levels of potential points of failure if this is not done right. For example, just because the delivery is to be done fast should not mean that dispensation errors increase \u2013 that is unacceptable,\u201d said Tandon at 1mg.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt Tata 1mg, we have taken our time to build our muscle to do things right, and we would always be conservative and err on the side of patient safety,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Plazza\u2019s Priyadarshi said, \u201cRetailing in general is not a very high margin business. Efficiencies and trade promises are very critical. You also have to keep inventory, which makes it capex heavy. So, I don\u2019t think this can be done in a multi-partnership model. Whoever wants to get into it has to build those capabilities that include inventory management, logistics, and having pharmacists because it\u2019s a regulated space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quick commerce firms Swiggy Instamart and Flipkart Minutes are tying up with Pharmeasy to offer 10-minute deliveries, while Zepto is setting up its own capabilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of elements that go into delivering medicines. Unlike offline, where rules around prescriptions and inventory management are only loosely followed, online creates a paper trail that can get companies into trouble,\u201d a senior e-pharmacy executive said, on condition of anonymity. \u201cIt won\u2019t be easy to short-circuit the regulatory regime simply by tying up with licensed druggists unless there are close relationships,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

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