Pharmarack Technologies Pvt. Ltd, a Pune-based healthcare tech start-up, is looking at expanding pan India presence by the end of 2017 with an aim to reach out to 30 capital cities and their adjoining cities.
The start-up is set to get 3,000 distributors, 75,000 retailers, few pharma companies on its platform by the end of this year.
Launched in September 2015, the company offers order processing and inventory management solutions to drug distributors and retailers through its subscription based application which connects chemists to wholesalers and wholesalers to C&F depots of drug manufacturers. Pharmarack has so far enrolled 750 distributors, 11,000 retailers in 35 locations including Mumbai, Kolhapur, Satara, Karad, Ichalkaranji, Ahmedabad, Surat, Baroda, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Belgaum, Kochi spanning over three states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka.
Talking to Pharmabiz, Pradyumn Singh, chief executive officer of Pharmarack, said: “There are many challenges in pharma supply chain on distribution front in absence of automated technology connecting warehouses, distributors and retailers. Orders are received and processed manually leading to inefficiencies, time-consuming delays and repetitive process. Using our application, Pharmarack is building an ecosystem that bridges the supply chain gap between pharmaceutical drug manufacturers, distributors, local pharmacists to help improve the sales and making the communication between the stakeholders more transparent.”
The subscription based app helps drug distributors place their product orders to C&F depots of drug companies, track its processing as well as available stock at their warehouses thereby bringing down their operational cost and increasing sales. Simultaneously, the app is of tremendous benefits to chemists who lose 20 per cent of the business due to non-availability of drugs. The app helps retailers to source medicines from distributors, gets details on drug manufacturers' offers, discounts, accurate doses of drugs, etc. Drug manufacturers can use our applications to launch products, have clear visibility of market inventory across geographies, ensure the availability of inventory within their warehouses and markets, to avoid stock outs, sales loss. They can also utilise the platform for efficient marketing, sales initiatives and use the market information to set relevant production targets, he said.
The company aims to create a strong impact across the entire supply chain matrix in the Indian pharmaceutical sector, which is pegged at Rs.1 lakh crore.
“We have done a pilot project with three companies including an MNC, Indian pharma giant, midsized company helping them manage their supply chain. We will soon ink deal with them”, he informed.
Talking about expansion of presence, he said “The country has 40,000 pin codes, we have presence in 4,000 pin codes. We wish to reach out to around 30 cities which will be capital cities of states and their adjoining cities, then open up market for pharma companies.”
Counterfeiting drug menace constituting a considerable size apart from the Rs.one lakh drug market is taking its toll on patient safety and drug makers' revenue. We are coming up with new features in our existing application to track the product movement from warehouse to retail shops to avoid counterfeiting. It will be based on block chain technology. Besides this, we also have plans to introduce product recall system through the application, once we grow pan India, said Pharmarack chief executive officer..
Pharmarack has raised two rounds of funding so far – seed funding of $ 280,000 from Unicorn India Ventures and pre Series A Rs.4.5 crore from Currae Healthtech and Unicorn India Ventures and the biggest Pharma logistics company in India.
Sharing his vision for 2020, he said that by 2020 the company would emerge as a leading digital platform providing solutions to pharma supply chain. Currently the market size in which we operate is pegged at Rs.3,500 crore, of them we target to achieve 10 per cent.