BENGALURU:The state government on Thursday will launch its first fair-price medical store to provide drugs at an affordable price.
First of these stores will be inaugurated at Varthur in Bengaluru on Thursday by state-owned Mysore Sales International Limited (MSIL).
“This is just a humble beginning and the shop will be inaugurated without fanfare,” MSIL Chairman M L Anil Kumar told Express.
MSIL has drawn up an ambitious plan for rapid expansion of the chain, which has been named as ‘MSIL Pharma’. “In Bengaluru alone, we have plans to open about 25 to 30 MSIL Pharma stores. In all more than 250 such stores will be opened in a phased manner. We intend to have at least one such store in every Assembly constituency,” Anil Kumar said.
The stores will sell medicines at a minimum discount of 10 per cent to start with as MSIL is just making foray into the pharma sales sector. According to Anil Kumar, the profit margin in medicines usually ranges from 5 per cent and goes up to 50 per cent in some cases. MSIL will definitely like to offer much bigger discounts as the number of stores increases, he said. The public sector enterprise wants to keep its profit margin very marginal, he added.
MSIL Pharma will bring a big relief, especially to those who are on long term medication and suffering from chronic diseases, as their monthly expenditure on medicines will reduce if they purchase drugs from MSIL Pharma stores, Anil Kumar said.