Flipkart In Discussions To Acquihire Online Pharmacy Pharmallama

Flipkart is reportedly in the advanced stage of acquhiring Bengaluru-based online pharmacy startup Pharmallama, run by the parent company Mera Dawai Pvt Ltd. 

Inc42 has reached out to Flipkart on the development and will soon update the story with its comments. 

Founded in June 2020 by Arjun Raghunandan, Deepesh Rajpal and Achintya Dayal, the Bengaluru-based online pharmacy runs a mobile app that delivers medications at customers’ doorstep. 

Pharmallama delivers medicines once a customer uploads a prescription on its app. The team then packs the medicines in different presorted parcels, arranged by date, time and dosages. The same gets delivered once the startup confirms the medications with customers. 

If materialised, Pharmallama will be Flipkart’s second acquisition in the epharmacy space after it acquired Kolkata-based healthtech startup SastaSundar Marketplace in November 2021. Following this acquisition, SastaSundar was renamed as Flipkart Health+. However, SastaSundar still owns a minority stake in Flipkart’s epharmacy business. 

Pharmallama’s acquisition information has come at a time when Flipkart is eyeing to expand its epharmacy business viz Flipkart Health+ across the country. For the same, it is focusing beyond Tier-I cities to compete with its archrivals such as Tata-owned 1mg, Reliance-owned Netmeds and Amazon Pharmacy. 

The country’s epharmacy space too has been in a tight spot with the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) sending show-cause notices to 20 online pharmacies, including Tata 1mg, Amazon, and Flipkart among others. They have been accused of selling and distributing medicines in violation of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940. For the uninitiated, the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 regulates the import, manufacturing and distribution of medicines in the country.

The DCGI further asked the epharmacines to give clarification as to why action should not be taken against them for contravening the rules.

Apart from the epharmacy space, the Walmart-backed ecommerce giant had made a few key acquisitions as well. For example, it acquired SaaS startup ANS Commerce in April 2022 and travel tech startup ClearTrip in April 2021. 

Further, we reported about Flipkart’s early investors Accel and Tiger Global planning to exit the ecommerce giant for $1.5 Bn in aggregate in January 2023. The move was part of Walmart’s plans to infusing as much as $2.5 Bn in Flipkart and PhonePe, 

Prior to this, Flipkart’s Singapore-based parent infused $90 Mn in its Indian marketplace arm, Flipkart Internet. The fresh capital infusion was made into Flipkart Marketplace Private Limited and Flipkart Private Limited, which are domiciled in Singapore. 

Flipkart too earned some bad press for a recent incident where, reportedly, its delivery agent Hemanth Naik was murdered by a customer named Hemanth Datta earlier this month. 

The incident happened in Karnataka where the customer got into an argument with a delivery agent while unpacking a parcel. Following the argument, the accused stabbed the delivery boy, put his body in a gunny bag, poured petrol over it and set it on fire, HBL reported.