Rahul Mathur@Rahul_J_Mathur
Over a decade ago, a company called Myra Medicines began operations in Bangalore.
No Jio, Flipkart barely a household name, Swiggy yet to be founded…. Times were very different then — “Quick” Commerce meant same week delivery. But, Myra was doing 30 minute medicine deliveries…
Perhaps a bit ahead of its time — but Myra raised money from Z47 (then known as Matrix Partners India), Times Internet and a few Angels in 2017/2018.
Myra would later be acquired by Medlife in 2019. Even then, Myra was doing 4,000 orders per day in BLR.. And, in 2021, PharmEast & Medlife merged into API Holdings.
The quest to deliver medicines in 30 minutes continues:
(1) Farmako (part of YC S20) — is live in NCR; recently raised a top up $1.6M funding
(2) Tata 1MG has been delivering medicines in 15 mins in some parts of NCR
(3) Blinkit supports fast deliveries for certain non-prescription medication
(4) Apollo 24x7 apparently has 20 min deliveries in some parts of NCR
(5) Medstown is live in HYD & doing 30 minute medicine deliveries
Tarun Davda, MD at Z47, had written a blog in 2017 about the investment into Myra In a conversation with TD, he mentioned that Myra was early to what we call “Quick Commerce” today — they had a ~95% success rate on delivery below 30 mins & were relentless in their effort to optimize their dark store.
In the blog, TD & the Z47 team rightly pointed out why the model might work ⤵️
(a) 30-min medicine delivery caters primarily to the acute care use-case (i.e. emergency)
(b) Whereas, the e-pharma / local drug store caters to the chronic use-case (i.e. regular medication needed by a chronic patient e.g. diabetic)
(c) There are tangible moats to be built: supply chain, prescription management, licensing, backwards integration through generics (via partnerships)
(d) There is also a B2B2C distribution play (e.g. how Farmako powers the virtual pharmacy of some care clinics & doctors) which can drive volume
(e) Over time, one can build recall / trust to eat into the chronic care wallet share as well (this is the standard use-case / category expansion playbook of e-comm & QC)
🧠Naturally, customer behavior today is VERY different from 2017 — lots of urban residents are QC junkies — they want everything NOW. And, there is still an open question: “is the Blinkit for Medicines, Blinkit only? Or, another company?”
➡️ Regardless of company-level outcomes, I do believe that 30-minute medicine delivery is a net positive for India — hopeful to see this flourish in the coming decade. Happy to chat if you're building in this space!
