Bengaluru based PM Health & Life Care Pvt Ltd (PMHLC) is creating India’s first ever platform to bring technology as the great enabler for facilitating well-informed healthcare access. The platform named ‘Health Exchange’ is proposed to meet the need of the consumers, clinics, hospitals, diagnostic centres and doctors to make quality healthcare accessible to the Indian population.
PMHLC intends to initially tap the universe of mobile users and internet savvy people in 100 cities across the country, with a distinct value proposition of ensuring availability of wide range of medicines and health products delivered in quickest possible time while providing ease and convenience that comes with mobile and online buying.”
This will not only enhance business prospects but also generate employment opportunities in our country. PMHLC is going to partner with 25 to 50 retailers in each of the 100 cities that it will operate in. As part of its business mandate, the chemist partners have to employee at least one registered pharmacist on a permanent basis. This will result into employment of close to 3500 registered pharmacists. Moreover, the model is going to give wings to a new career opportunity that of chemist representatives. And it will lead to intake of additional 4000 registered pharmacists.
Says Hemant Bhardwaj, Co Founder & CEO, PM Health & Life Care Pvt Ltd, “Pharma retailing in India is currently US$ 10 billion market, expected to grow to over US$ 55 billion by 2020. The first step in the PMHLC’s venture is to launch a managed online marketplace which will connect the chemists and druggists with consumers. It will enable the chemists and druggists partners to leverage the massive reach of its platform, and adhere to the regulatory compliance.”
According to a paper published in Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research in 2014, there are more than 1500 institutions offering various pharmacy training programmes across the country. With an annual enrollment of around 100,000 students, the influx of students into pharmacy colleges is at an all time high.
India produces about one lakh pharmacists every year with D. Pharm, B. Pharm and M. Pharm degrees; however very few of them get a suitable job. Lack of job opportunities among the pharmacy graduates is a serious issue in the country, and needs to be addressed urgently to ensure proper recognition of this profession and raise its standard. According to research there are more pharmacy graduates in our country compared to that of the availability of job. The situation has not been very pleasant as the employment opportunity for pass outs each year has been dipping in our country, hence resulting into students applying for jobs abroad for better growth and pay packages.
Currently, over 35 million Indians are shopping online and this tribe is expected to cross 100 million by 2016. Similarly health care could be the next big thing on the e-commerce platform to blow the world by a storm. Healthcare sector is one of the fastest growing and revenue generating sectors today. People are getting more health conscious and with the rapid increase in the life expectancy rate, the need for healthcare products will rise up breaking all records sooner than expected.