An initiative to digitise pharmacies that have been using conventional, offline techniques has been started in the city by the Pune-based firm Biddano. This entails substituting technological procedures for manual ones, such as paper-based bookkeeping, so that firms may connect with local clients via an app and swiftly complete their orders.
The business, which secured $2 million in funding in June 2022, started with one drugstore in the city and hopes to expand to 10 in the next weeks before expanding to 2 lakh pharmacies throughout India.
“In India, there are almost a million offline pharmacies that provide more than 90% of the pharmaceutical market with prescription drugs, surgical supplies, and other items. In recent years, there has been a change in India, where more individuals now choose to make purchases online. Most pharmacies were falling behind because they lacked the necessary infrastructure to meet the needs of contemporary clients.
The digital platform B-Pharmacies will be used by Biddano to organise its extensive network of pharmacies, according to Talha Shaikh, who co-founded the company with Ashok Yadav.
B-Pharmacies is a spinoff of the concept of Biddano, a business-to-consumer platform of neighbourhood pharmacies that would fill prescription orders from adjacent regions in less than an hour. The startup’s decision to postpone this strategy provides insight into the status of the nation’s pharmacies.
Within six months of starting operations, Biddano discovered that pharmacies lacked the necessary equipment and that their infrastructure was fractured and disorganised. When dealing with combination meds, for instance, a pharmacy could only stock a couple of the ten medications that were listed on a prescription.
The company has been filling the holes ever since. It introduced Shortbuk, a marketplace where pharmacists may get in touch with top stockists nearby. Pharmacies may get the products from wholesalers and stockists in less than three hours according to Biddano’s logistics platform, Bkart. The fintech division of Biddano called B-Fin makes it possible for pharmacies to obtain financing and have a steady cash flow.
“In order to make sure that neighbourhood pharmacies never ran out of stock, we had to first adapt the business to B2B. Over 2 lakh pharmacies are available on platforms, and we have expanded operations to over 23 cities, according to Shaikh. They now serve 6 lakh orders each day across the nation, having a positive influence on over 1 million lives.
“At this time, we’re giving our network of pharmacies a simple technological platform so they can meet online customer requests. The platform will also assist them in integrating their systems with telemedicine businesses and new-age brands, from inventory to fulfilment to delivery. Many telemedicine businesses are in discussions with us about having local pharmacies fill their prescriptions, Shaikh continues. The Pune model will eventually spread to other metropolises, followed by Tier-1 and Tier-II cities.
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