From a company selling Over-The-Counter (OTC) medicines, Sequoia Capital-backed Healthkart has morphed into one that is totally focused on nutrition and fitness products.
“We are re-orienting ourselves into a vertical player in fitness and nutrition. Initially we started with OTC drugs but later we saw a bigger opportunity in nutrition and fitness products which is potentially a 2 to 3 billion dollar market in India,” said Sameer Maheshwari, CEO at Healthkart, which started experimenting with private brands in this vertical back in 2013.
Private brands now contribute to about 50% to the total business and this vertical having grown 3X since last year, the company is betting on the growth to break even by March 2017, says Prashant Tandon Former Co-Founder at Healthkart who now runs 1mg, a separate entity spun off from Heakthkart.
Some of the highest selling private brands on Healthkart are protein supplement brand Muscle Blaze, weight loss supplement Incredio and lifestyle brand Health Viva.
Healthkart chooses nutrition & fitness over drug sales
Healthkart, which was founded in 2011 by Sameer Maheshwari and Prashant Tandon, is currently ramping up investments in its R&D centre in Gurgaon which is currently a 10-people team, including six to seven food scientists and manufacturing operations at Baddi, Himachal Pradesh.
Also, 1mg, which is a rebranding of Healthkart Plus launched by the company in 2012, is planning to spread its online network of pharmacies from 12 to 30 cities by end of this year. Most of the growth will be fuelled by the Rs 100 crore it recently raised from Maverick Capital Ventures and existing investors Sequoia Capital India and Omidyar Network.
The vertical will also be investing in product development, analytics and expanding the leadership team besides aggressively expanding into other lines of business including online medical consultations.
Leveraging on the growth of Healthkart Plus to work as a Wikipe dia for medicines in India with a database of about 1,00,000 medicines and details such as their composition and side-effects, it was rebranded as 1mg last year. Subsequently, the company had raised $6 million from a clutch of investors including Healthkart’s backer Sequoia Capital and MakeMyTrip CEO Deep Kalra.
The app also allows people to search for substitutes and compare market prices. “Within a year, the app became exponentially popular raking in 1-million downloads while no other similar app has close to 1-lakh downloads. Consumer engagement was tremendous,” said Prashant Tandon, CEO at 1mg.
Now, 1mg, which gets around 25 million page views, 2-million unique visits per month, and has achieved 5.5-million downloads, is modelled as an online marketplace for pharmacies, allowing consumers to place orders with their nearest pharmacy store. Also, diagnostic tests can be booked on the platform by comparing rates and choosing diagnostic labs on the platform.
Source: The Economic Times
