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Sehat Sathi, a B2B app that helps in digital transformation of local pharmacies, is planning to digitise over 25,000 stores in south India over the next 18 months.
“As of today, we have a good presence in Kerala and in some parts of Bengaluru. In the next 12-18 months, we will try to cover 25,000 medical stores in the five southern States and our focus will be on pharmacies in tier-2 and tier-3 cities,” Shreyans Mehta, Co-Founder, Sehat Sathi, told BusinessLine .
Developed in 2017 by Mehta along with Nikhil Baheti and Saida Dhanavath, Sehat Sathi enables standalone pharmacy stores to take their business online within minutes without any need for investment in technology.
Developed by online healthcare platform MedCords, Sehat Sathi is integrated with a consumer facing app Aayu, which helps end-users to search for medicines in the nearby area and get them delivered at their doorsteps.
‘Efficient, affordable’
“According to statistics, there is only one pharmacy available for every 1,700 people. So, we have built Sehat Sathi to provide efficient, quick, affordable and trusted healthcare solutions not just to people in the metros but also for those in smaller towns Bharat,” Mehta said.
Launched in Kota district of Rajasthan, Sehat Sathi today has a network spanning 600 towns/cities spread across 15 States. It claims to have digitised 30,000 pharmacies, enabling last mile delivery of healthcare services and products to more than 35 lakh families. The company is looking to expand its network and digitise 50,000 pharmacies across the country by the end of 2021.
Sehat Sathi has two revenue streams. While it does not charge anything from the medical stores, it charges from companies to list their products in its pharmacy network. The other source of revenue is through e-consultations services.
“Today, we are able to provide medicine deliveries in less than two hours through our medical store partners. We also offer online consultation services with over 5,000 specialist doctors in less than 30 minutes,” Mehta said.
The Covid-19 pandemic gave a push to telemedicine consultation. E-pharmacy growth also helped the company to scale-up faster.
“We have grown our medical store network 30x in less than 12 months and all that happened only through word-of-mouth because offline pharmacies are realising the value of digitisation and are quickly adapting to technology,” Mehta said.
According to an EY report, the Indian e-pharmacy market was estimated at $0.5billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $4.5 billion in 2025 growing at a CAGR of 44 per cent. The report also noted that e-pharmacy is projected to represent about 10-12 per cent of the total pharmaceutical sales by 2025 up from current 2-3 per cent levels in 2019.
Sehat Sathi has two revenue streams. While it does not charge anything from the medical stores, it charges from companies to list their products in its pharmacy network. The other source of revenue is through e-consultations services.
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