KOCHI: Sometimes not all medicines prescribed by the doctor can be found at a pharmacy. Abhijith E M, who holds a Master’s in AI and Data Science from the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), had to face a similar experience when he went around trying to buy a specific medicine for his parents. Also, e-pharmacy biggies have zero presence in smaller cities.
“Prescription bouncebacks are quite prevalent,” said Abhijith who along with his two friends Nidhun K and Mohammed Rizvan V, then thought of finding a solution to the problem. Their brain-storming led to a venture called Pillsbee, an AI-powered B2B Pharmaceutical platform that is revolutionising retail pharmacy operations.
“The startup was launched in 2019,” says Abhijith. “Through the e-pharmacy idea, we are attempting to aggregate the existing pharmacies in a region to satisfy the patient requirements. After one year of work, we noticed the current pharmacies’ incompetence in assuring availability and affordability in comparison to other e-pharmacy platforms. So, we decided to organise a solo pharmacy operation,” says the CEO of the startup company that was bootstrapped.
“As market validation, we started by offering procurement services to 15 members of our e-pharmacy network. We got a larger response for the procurement service, and the number of pharmacies that chose to join our platform increased to 100 in the pilot phase,” says Abhijith. Explaining more about the deficiencies of the current system, he said, “Retail pharmacies serve an important role in meeting medical needs, particularly in rural and semi-urban areas.”
“However,” he added, “due to their disorganised operations, most independent pharmacies today fail to meet the needs of patients. The e-pharmacy behemoths are likewise unable to fill this need because their activities are usually confined to major cities. Because rural regions account for 80% of the pharma industry, this market gap is causing a severe shortfall in the healthcare sector.”
According to the Indian Economic Survey 2021, India’s domestic pharmaceutical market was estimated at $42 billion in 2021 and is likely to reach $65 billion by 2024. “Pillsbee began as a standard e-pharmacy platform connecting pharmacies to ensure medication accessibility and availability. We identified the shortcomings of our brick-and-mortar pharmacies, and decided to pivot and build an end-to-end solution that organises and integrates retail pharmacy procurement, logistics, working capital and data across a single value chain for the daily fulfilment of pharma operations.”
After coming up with the idea, the three youngsters, who were all holding good corporate jobs, decided to drop everything and pool their talents into developing the platform. “We decided to resign and dive right in,” said Nidhun K, COO of the company. He says, “As the organisers of the Innovations and Entrepreneurship Development Cell at Mar Athanasius College of Engineering, we were inspired by the concept of creating the future with our product.”
Participating and cracking hackathons moulded the team’s problem-solving attitude, which helped them succeed in their entrepreneurial journey. The completely bootstrapped company has received startup grants and support of Rs 30 lakh from the Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM), Cusat RUSA Foundation, OpenUp Accelerator, and Microsoft.
According to Abhijith, Pillsbee is also one of five startups selected for the OpenUp fintech accelerator, which was founded by Kerala’s first unicorn startup, Open Financial Technologies. “Pillsbee will be able to address the working capital demands of retail pharmacies as a result of this agreement,” he adds.
The startup, which has tied up with over 1,000 pharmacies and 50 distributors in Kerala, plans to expand to a pan-India business by 2024. Pillsbee had a Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of `5 crores in its first year of B2B operations and fulfilled over 75,000 orders.
“Our vision is to become the most widely accepted pharmacy management platform, and provider. The focus will be on supply Chain Analytics, to improve manufacturing operational efficiency and overall supply chain effectiveness by enabling informed data-driven decisions across the pharmaceutical industry,” said Mohammed.
The founders are each taking care of the responsibilities divided in accordance with their skills and talents. While Abhijith develops corporate alliances and collaborations, Mohammed, who had worked with Zoho Corporation as a Technical Team member, oversees the technology development, and Nidhun takes care of the B2C pharma operations.
What they do
It integrates retail pharmacy procurement, logistics, working capital and data across a single value chain for the daily fulfilment of pharma operations. The completely bootstrapped company has received startup grants of I30 lakh.