Indian E-Pharmacy Startups PharmEasy, Medlife Plans To Merge Operations

Online pharmacy startup, Pharmeasy has decided to merge its operations with Bengaluru based omnichannel pharmaceutical platform, Medlife. As per reports, the companies have entered into a formal agreement with the motive to take things forward. The agreement deal says that Medlife will be selling its 100 percent equity to API Holdings which happens to be the parent company of PharmEasy, instead of 19.59 percent stake in the merged entity. Competition Commission of India is still left to look into the matter and the transaction is waiting for its approval from the body. As per reports, the valuation of the combined entity is pegged at $1.2 billion. The move has taken place in such a time when e-pharmacy is moving towards a good future and corporates as well as big e-commerce houses are continuously entering into this lucrative business.

This can be particularly understood when Jeff Bezos who led Amazon India launched the Amazon pharmacy in Bengaluru last week. Reliance too is in talks to scale up its grocery and pharmacy platform.

Flipkart is reportedly looking to enter this market and the talks of potential partnership for the same are on with PharmEasy. Flipkart is also planning to launch its own separate business entity and create its own business team for this segment.

Currently, the market for e-pharmacy is fragmented and it is the right time to bring the market together as retailers are in a competition to get a hold of the top position.

Last year the Bengaluru based Medlife made to the headlines when it raised about $ 15.5 million through the issue of non-convertible debentures. Again in May 2019, it acquired Myra which is a Bengaluru – based medicine delivery start-up. The company before that had acquired Medlabz in January which is a digital healthcare platform and also a provider of home diagnostics.