You’re reading an eChai Interview, an insightful and candid conversation with Entrepreneurs — a publication of eChai Ventures.

MeraPharmacy - Hyberlocal online pharmacy store

Rajkumar Popat is the Co-Founder of MeraPharmacyan hyperlocal online pharmacy both as mobile application and website which deals with the sale of online pharmaceutical products.

Here is an insightful and candid conversation - an eChai with Rajkumar.

Tell us more about your team?

Rajkumar Popat has almost 7+ years in field of marketing. He is a post graduate in MBA from IBS Hyderabad and handles complete strategic and go to market ideas for company.

Sneha Popat has almost 5+ years of experience in field of Operations and then HR. She is a post graduate in MBA from IBS Mumbai and currently leads Finance and HR department of the company.

Pratilk Patel had got almost 6+ years of experience in field of Mobile App Development. Pratik handles complete mobile app development right from scratch to release

Bharat Patel had got 30+ years of experience in varied industry and a serial entrepreneur. He is qualified as an Engineer in Electronics and Communication. Earlier he had been partner of Remik Infocom engaged in hardware products. He headed President with ABS, a division of British Council, Chairman, GESIA, on Board with Board of Studies with Nirma University, Past Chairman with CSI, Ahmedabad. Bharat handles PR and marketing for the company.

Jignesh Thummar had got 8+ years of experience in PHP and developing complete magento solution. Jignesh handles web development portion for Merapharmacy.com

How did you come up with the idea of 'MeraPharmacy'?

I was working with ICRA credit rating agency and got access to various industry reports. We studied different industries by nature of industry, cyclical or not, growth of industry, competitive landscape, regulatory guidelines etc and finally we shortlisted on two industry as liquor and pharma. Liquor was something always attractable but as was living in Gujarat, dry state thought of dropping an idea with liquor and moved on to Pharma. We started looking to validate business idea of selling medicine online with hyperlocal delivery and to a surprise we got totally negative response as everything can be sold online except medicine. We tried studying models of Walgreens and CVS in US and Boots in UK in terms of online pharmacy and got some confidence that it is something which has a future in India. Then was birth of Merapharmacy.com happened not knowing how long will it survive.

What problem are you solving?

Merapharmacy.com is currently solving few simple pain points of customer:

  • Ensure availability of ALL medicines to customer
  • Reduce medical expense of customer by providing option for generic medicines and substitutes
  • As many people tend to forget to take their medicine on timely basis, we help them in sending pill reminder services
  • Moreover we have seen many houses where people rush at last moment to buy regular medicines once they are exhausted instead of planning in advance
  • Reduce pain for waiting in queue for getting medicines instead get it delivered within 4 hrs.

How does it work?

Merapharmacy is an online pharmacy marketplace which takes care of addressing your medical needs at your doorstep with hyper-local delivery within 4 hrs from placing an order. Customer places an order with Merapharmacy.com along with prescription for prescribed medicines which in turn is passed on to nearest medical store of customer’s address and ensuring delivery of medicine within 4 hrs.

What is your target market?

As the recent study by Mckinsey Analysis there is steep rise of Chronic patients in India. According to one of report published, 62mn people will suffer from Coronary heart disease, 46mn from diabetes, 34mn from Asthma and Obesity individually and 2.5mn from Cancer by end of 2015.

What is your competitive advantage?

Merapharmacy.com focuses mainly on providing customer an user experience and simplicity for ordering medicine. We have currently one of largest drug database in country around more than 1.2 lacs medicines available. Merapharmacy pioneered the concept of pill reminder to customer in India without setting it manually. We ensure fastest delivery possible to customer within 4 hrs currently.

How much time did it take you from conceptualization of 'your venture' to actually launching it in the market ?

We took around 11 months from ideate, design, prototype, test and launch starting from Nov 2013 and finally commencing in October 2014. It was really different experience in talking to people and convincing the idea to seller that medicines can also be sold online/

What is your technology stack?

Merapharmacy.com offers web as well as mobile friendly website along with android mobile application. Merapharmacy.com is built on Magento platform, one of robust E-commerce platform used by many of reputed companies in world like Nike, Samsung etc.

As Merapharmacy.com deals in healthcare it take utmost care for in storing each prescription in secured server. The website pages are also SSL certified ensuring safe purchase of medicine. Merapharmacy has partnered with Gold partners of magento for complete hosting solutions. Merapharmacy.com has partnered with Paytm, a payment bank approved by RBI for providing convenience to customer in making payment.

How do you plan to market your product? What are your customer acquisition strategies?

Merapharmacy focus on reaching to customer by way of different marketing medium like social media, online marketing campaign. We also take support of traditional form of advertising depending on locality of city. We are also in process of some breakthrough customer acquisition programs like corporate tieups amongst one of them.

What is the revenue model of 'MeraPharmacy' ?

Revenue model is very much simple by way of commission charged to vendor on sale of each product.

What do you want to achieve from this? What is your larger goal or vision?

We wanted to see as one of India’s most trusted online healthcare provider.

What sort of support and feedback are you looking from the community?

We would like the community to support us in providing feedback and suggestions about product.