Nandan Nilekani’s Fundamentum May Lead $50 Mn Funding Round In PharmEasy

Mumbai-based healthtech startup PharmEasy may soon raise a $40-50 Mn funding round from Nandan Nilekani and Sanjeev Aggarwal-led investment firm Fundamentum Advisors and Eight Roads Ventures, the proprietary investment arm of Fidelity International.

The round, which is expected to close over the next two weeks, may see participation from company’s existing investors — Orios Venture Partners, Astarc Ventures, J M Financial and Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG) — who have committed $15 Mn.

The latest funding round may value the company at $130 Mn post-money. This new round of equity financing could also see an additional tranche of $10 Mn, with a third new investor, possibly strategic in nature.

PharmEasy is expected to use the funding towards growth and to further build its technology platform.

Founded in 2015 by Dharmil Sheth and Dr Dhaval Shah, PharmEasy is catering to the chronic care segment and offers a range of services including teleconsultation, medicine delivery, sample collection for diagnostic tests, as well as subscription-based service, which is currently live in a few cities.

The company has expanded its presence to 700 cities and 2,000 pin codes with over 150 partner vendors. It claims to receive around 8,000 orders a day.

“The company is doing well. It is among the top companies in the ePharmacy space. It has a play in both in retail and wholesale. Their average order value is around ₹1,000. The company is looking to use the money to fuel its expansion and also to finance cash burn in this competitive market. The deal might be announced sometime early next month,” said one of the sources.

Till date, the company has raised $53 Mn, with last being $30 Mn (INR 196 Cr) in Series C funding round led by existing investors: Bessemer Venture Partners and Orios Venture Partners, and new investors: JM Financials and MEMG.

Dharmil Sheth, CEO of PharmEasy, said “We have been talking to a lot of investors to raise money. But nothing concrete yet. The next one year is going to be more of building the category and acquiring more customers from across every geography in India. We are looking to grow at least five times considering space is still very nascent.”

In the healthtech space, we also have players like MedPlus, 1mg, NetMeds, Punit Soni’s Suki, Visit, Innovaccer, Zoctr, Lybrate, and Tricog, among others.

India’s pharmaceutical industry was valued at $33 Bn in 2017. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 22.4% over 2015–20 to reach $55 Bn.

At the same time, the market for diagnostic services has been growing in India over the past couple of years at a rate of 15%-20% and stood at nearly INR 40,000 Cr as of 2016.

Overall, the global healthtech market is anticipated to reach $104.5 Bn by 2020, according to a new report by Grand View Research. Meanwhile, the Indian healthcare market is further expected to reach $280 Bn by 2020, from the current $100 Bn, according to an IBEF report.

[The development was reported by ET.]