Medlife Acquires HealthTech Startup EClinic24/7; To Invest $100 Mn for E-Pharma Expansion

Bangalore-based online e-pharmacy firm Medlife has announced that it has acquired EClinic24/7, a Bengaluru-based health technology startup company founded by Jeyandran Venugopal, an ex- Amazon and B S Prabhakar, an ex-Yahoo executive.

The acquisition comes with a couple of months after an anther online pharmacy player NetMeds had acquired JustDoc, a Bangalore-based telemedicine portal, in September.

EClinic24/7 is a telemedicine platform that connect its users with doctors for a Video consult, Voice call, Chat or Email/Web based consults.

The financials of the acquisition was not disclosed. The acquisition is part of Medlife’s plans of offering an enhanced and seamless healthcare experience in e-consultation on the Medlife platform for both patients and doctors.

Started in 2015 by by Singularity Healthcare IT Systems Pvt. Ltd., EClinic24/7 claims to be the first and only provider in India in this space offering fully compliant, digitally signed e-prescriptions as a part of the consultations. It also boasts a cloud based Electronic Health Record (EHR) platform that underlies the consultation experience and integrates the latest standards in clinical data storage and retrieval.

Speaking on the acquisition, Tushar Kumar, Founder and CEO, Medlife said, “Our acquisition of EClinic24/7 will allow us to create a disruption in the e-consultation space with an enhanced offering to our customers. EClinic24/7 has been recognised as a NASSCOM Emerge 50 company and has developed a fantastic technology platform that has the potential of transforming the healthcare paradigm in our country. The acquisition will also add to our future revenues with e-consultation contributing to 5 to 10 per cent of our overall business in the near future."

Besides tje acquisition, Medlife, which currently has 1500 specialist doctors working for it, also announced to make an investment of $100 million in order to expand its e-pharmaceutical network around the country.

Medlife was initially started as a drug delivery mechanism and eventually evolved into an online doctor consultation and laboratory service. The company plans to set up one diagnostic lab in both Mumbai and Delhi by the end of December 2018. Currently, it has one centre in Bengaluru.

According to Prashant Singh, Founder and Director, Medlife “e-consultation will provide a huge impetus to the people and the benefits are multifold – 24X7 access to more specialised and experienced doctors particularly for people in smaller towns and villages, customised consultation, second opinion, privacy, etc. And, importantly saving time and travel cost will be huge for a patient. With the penetration of smartphones and network coupled with the fact that it has done well in countries like China, US etc. we are quite buoyant about this segment of Healthcare.”

Medlife will integrate the EClinic24/7’s technology on the Medlife platform from December 2018. The users can get immediate care by consulting a general physician or a specialist doctor on the platform and choose video/voice calls, email or chat through the Medlife App, website or voice dial in. Patients will have the added gaurantee of verified and competent doctors. Presently there are over 1500 doctors on the Medlife platform alone and it plans to add over 10,000 doctors in the next one year.

Commenting on the acquisition, Jeyandran Venugopal, Founder, EClinic24/7 said, “At EClinic24/7, with our deep experience in technology, we developed a robust consumer internet technology platform. Along with experienced healthcare experts we were able to scale the technology offering to a complete and easy to use platform. We are glad that Medlife, the market leaders in e-pharmacy in India have come forward to take this technology platform to a wider customer base. With the integration of Medlife platform we are confident that it will set new standards in India’s e-consultation market."

Via - Indian Express

Bengaluru Based Medlife To Infuse $30 Mn To Scale Up Its E-Pharmacy Biz

We are living in a century where everything is available at a click of a button. Today people buy almost everything from grocery to gadgets on web stores and in such scenario how can medical lack behind. It is the right time that the medical and pharmaceutical market catches up to the trend and indeed it has.

If we look at the figures, India's pharmacy market is pegged at Rs 1,20,000 crore of which e-pharmacy is about Rs 700-800 crore but growing rapidly.And to tap this untapped market,

And to tap this untapped market, a lot of e-pharmacies startups like 1mg, Netmeds, PharmEasy, Medlife are now fulfilling the medicinal needs online. Not only this, these startups are also getting backing from the prominent investors.

Where startups like HealthKart, which raised $15 million in series-C from HBM Healthcare Investments is grabbing funds, there is one such startup which is largely been funded by capital from the founders, has so far been operating in a quiet mode. It's none other than Bengaluru-based Medlife.

Medlife.com is a technology company with a heart and dream that every Indian gets to access the best possible health care and aims to be the pioneer healthcare hub that would bring all stakeholders on a single platform so that our customers can have a seamless healthcare experience. At Medlife.com, the team uses their domain and technological expertise to make health care delivery much more efficient and effective.

Founded in 2014 by Prashant Singh and Tushar Kumar, one of the founders of pharma company Alkem Laboratories, Medlife has planned an internal investment of $30 million to scale up its e-pharmacy business.

The firm is now planning an aggressive expansion strategy to scale up its e-pharmacy business to over 100 cities by 2018. Further, it is eyeing to strengthen its technology capabilities and enter into related verticals such as diagnostics and e-consultation.

Commenting on the development, Tushar Kumar, CEO, Medlife told ET, "Online pharmacy is still a nascent business but is now on a very strong footing since regulatory hurdles are expected to resolve soon taking into consideration the government's push for campaigns like Digital India and Startup India. We are looking to target tier II and tier-III cities in India."

The firm further claims to have a positive gross margin and is operational in 34 cities. The app-based medicine delivery platform uploads 10,000 prescriptions and executes over 4,000 shipments on a daily basis.