Portea Medical, the home healthcare company, has acquired specialty pharmaceutical distributor Medybiz Pharma to strengthen patient engagement and provide better care for chronic disease patients in India. The acquisition was made for an undisclosed consideration of cash and stock.

Medybiz Pharma was started in 2009. Its services include speciality pharma support (patient assistance programmes ‘PAP’) for pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy benefits management (PBM) services as part of employee benefits programmes. The company’s offerings run the entire gamut covering diabetes, cardiology, oncology, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, tuberculosis and neurology, amongst others. Over the last six years it has served more than two lakh patients providing prescription refill and therapy compliance support for super-speciality medicines.

Portea handles over 60,000 home visits a month across 24 cities in India and in September 2015 received Series B funding of $US 37.5 million from Accel, IFC, Qualcomm Ventures and Ventureast.

Announcing the acquisition Meena Ganesh, MD & CEO, Portea Medical said, a structured and integrated approach enveloping awareness, monitoring and ongoing disease management is vital to tackle the battle India faces with chronic disease. While hospital-based treatments are important, continuing care delivered to patients at home is a key prong of effective treatment. With the acquisition of Medybiz, we are adding a vital and powerful, specialized pharma arm to deliver better pharmacy care to patients with chronic conditions who have ongoing needs for medication.

Headquartered in Bengaluru, Medybiz has 200 employees and a footprint across 26 cities in 19 states in India. The company was acquired from the Reliance ADA Group by its management team in 2011. Kewal Handa, a 30-year pharmaceutical industry veteran and formerly MD of Pfizer India is the chairman of Medybiz.

Commenting on the development, Handa said that while diseases may respond to medicine, people respond to care, and chronic diseases in particular require specialized care over many years. We have always been committed to the best outcomes for patients and are therefore delighted with our alignment with Portea which will exponentially increase the impact we have on patients.