From an Awareness Website to a Medtech Giant- Unravel the Story of Tata’s 1mg

• ByStartupStory     |    November 12, 2021

“People were comfortable buying books, gadgets, and so forth. We had initially launched 1mg (formerly HealthKartPlus) as a consumer awareness platform, helping them learn about their medicines, while also comparing prices of the various alternatives for the brand that they were prescribed. We got a fantastic response from consumers for this initiative, and soon many consumers asked if we could also help them access the medicines conveniently through our platform,” said the co-founder of 1mg, Prashant Tandon.

The past decade has highlighted the significance of healthcare with the changing lifestyle of the population. Similarly, with an increase in the speed of the internet, various e-commerce platforms have popped up which have made life easier for mankind. In an attempt to raise awareness about medicines and offer a one-stop solution to customers across India for their immediate medicinal needs, the IIT trio came up with 1mg.

Formerly known as HealthKart Plus, 1mg is an online medtech platform which provides customers access to all their medicinal needs as well as allows the clients to get their blood samples delivered to the nearest labs. The platform also helps in raising awareness around different medicines to ensure that no individual gets deceived.

IIT Graduates to Medicinal Bond

The founders of 1mg, Prashant Tandon, Gaurav Agarwal as well as Vikas Chauhan are alumni of the prestigious IIT Delhi. While Prashant Tandon and Gaurav Agarwal were batch mates, Vikas Chauhan was their senior. After graduation, the trio parted their ways to pursue their independent careers.

Prashant Tandon and Vikas Chahun founded HealthKart in 2011 with the hope to raise awareness about general healthcare and drugs. In 2013, Gaurav Agarwal joined HealthKart. The founders of the company wanted to curate an online space where customers could easily access a variety of drugs essential for personal use thus reducing the hassle of travel and search for them. In 2014, the seeds of inception for 1mg were sown and since then the company never looked back. 1mg was launched in 2015 as an e-commerce platform for customers to obtain medication.

Journey from awareness platform to an e-commerce giant

The Tata backed 1mg was not always an e-commerce platform. Surprisingly, 1mg began its journey from a modest consumer awareness platform which would allow consumers to make educated choices in terms of medicines by comparing its price, use, side effects etc. The customers appalled the initiative and further demanded an e-commerce platform which would consolidate authentic and quality medicines for consumption.

Talking about the journey of 1mg, Prashant Tandon, co-founder and managing director stated, “When we ideated 1mg, our objective was to tackle the basic issues related to medicines, viz a viz non-availability of certain medicines in offline stores, high cost, lack of access to drug-related information for the customers. Having realized the importance of technology, online commerce space appeared perfect to us to invest our time. Fortunately, our investor’s interests were aligned with our goals and the funds received from them were utilized in improving our product and services.”

Unlike other e-commerce platforms, 1mg deals with medicines and thus the procedure for placing and procuring the end product are quite different. The procedure that a client has to follow includes uploading a prescription signed by a registered doctor following which the same is verified by the 1mg expert team. After verification, the order is successfully placed and shipped to the address.

Transforming the awareness platform to an e-commerce gateway proved out to be a success for the company in the long run. Today, 1mg caters to more than 3 million Indians across 100+cities with over 1 lakh medicines listed on their platform.

Funding and Achievements

The medtech startup has raised an aggregate amount of $204.6 million through 12 rounds of funding. The company’s major investors include HBM Healthcare Investments AG, Sequoia Capital, Tata Digital, Maverick Ventures, InnoVen Capital, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Redwood Global Healthcare Fund and Corisol Holding AG.

Due to its consistent and diligent efforts in the field of medicine and e-commerce, the Mumbai based startup has bagged numerous awards. In 2016, 1mg was acknowledged as the “Best App in the medical category” by Gmasa. Further, in the same year the company was also named as the “Best online pharmacy in India” by International Quality Awards and was felicitated with the “New Kid on the Block” award in NDTV Unicorn Awards.

Additionally, in 2018, the company bagged the title of “Best Content in a Healthcare/Fitness App” and was also recognized as the “Best Mobile Innovation for Health Award” at India Mobile Congress.

Paving a sustainable future

After establishing itself as a key player in the medtech market, 1mg aims to expand its operation further to other segments as well. The online platform plans to expand its product offerings and enter the alternate medicine space through its acquisition of Homeobuy.com. Homeobuy is a web platform which offers homeopathy medicines and comes under AYUSH category.

The company also intends to rebrand its website to 1mgAyush whereby it would be promoting homeopathy medicines. This would allow the startup to reach a wider audience while also garnering support from the government.

Furthermore, the company also looks forward to introducing a 60-minute delivery model in selected locations round the country. Along with that, 1mg also plans on expanding the short time deliveries to all the locations in the coming years.

With the recent market trends showing a bullish phase for pharmaceutical companies and e-commerce platforms, it is evident that 1mg would grow exponentially in the coming years. The main challenge, however, for the company would be to put forth a unique product offering as the medtech market has started observing increased concentration.

Follow Startup Story