Medlife was started in 2014 by Mr. Prashant Singh and Mr. Tushar Kumar. The company started as an online medicine delivery service but later expanded to offer a wide range of services ranging from online doctor consultation to diagnostics services. As Mr. Tushar puts it, the company began its journey after seeing the gap in India’s healthcare system by developing a product with patients at its core.
The company aims to make an impactful difference by offering genuine and seamless medical solutions for patients through technology. The company has bought doctors, pharmacists, pathological labs, and consumers on a single platform to make healthcare delivery accessible and affordable. In 2018, Medlife was awarded India’s best pharma delivery e-Platform company by Frost and Sullivan.
The company is the largest e-healthcare provider in the country. It has its mobile app, which is both easy to use and user friendly. It operates in more than 2500 cities, 5000+ employees, and has its labs in a few metros. The central laboratory of the company is in Bengaluru. In May 2020, Medlife went multilingual, offering the Hindi language in their app. The company aims to become a $2 billion business by 2024. Its unique proposition along with its marketing strategy is what contributed to its success.
Overview
The company started with initial funding of $15 million, and later on, it got $30 million financings from promoters and family capital. Medlife has three business segments of pharmacy, diagnostics, and e-consultation. The company delivers medicines at customer’s doorsteps. Medlife receives these drugs from manufacturers directly, and these are thoroughly authenticated. It provides medication at a discounted price to the customers through its coupon codes.
A customer can order quickly in three steps: prescription uploading, collection of original prescriptions by the company from home, and drug delivery at home. The company addresses all the apprehensions about its products by sourcing them from authorized dealers directly. It has world-class warehousing and logistics facilities to maintain the efficacy of these medicines.
The mobile app of Medlife is a one-stop solution for all healthcare services. Doctors can also store patients’ records online. Medlife offers its customers 24/7 availability of doctors at reasonable prices. The consultation charges include seven days of follow-ups. The e-consultation could be availed through video, audio, or chat. The app also has an AI-based chatbot to answer repetitive questions of the users.
Medlife’s 60% of customers are from the top 30 cities of India. The customer segments include patients, doctors, diagnostic labs, corporates, and wellness services. Medlife employs Sumo Logic to address the application related challenges. According to Medlife, the Sumo logic platform is rock-solid, easy to use, and offers proactive monitoring. The company has significantly reduced MTTR, resulting in systems’ stability and reduced its business loss. Through Sumo Logic, the company quickly fixes any production issues and roll out fixes for the same.
Recently, Snapdeal has partnered with Medlife, enabling users to order medicines and avail of full-body health check-ups and diagnostic testing through the Snapdeal platform. Medlife’s personnel will deliver the order within 24 hours of receiving it. Apart from this, there is also an option of COVID-19 testing at home for Snapdeal’s users if they meet specific criteria. The company has also partnered with labs that support customers testing requirements. Medlife partnered with insurance companies such as Aditya Birla Health Insurance to offer cashless Medicine delivery to its eligible customers.
Medlife reported a revenue of INR 363 cr for the year ended March 2019. The revenue was up 165% YOY, whereas the loss surged 145% to INR 404 cr. The losses were due to expenditures on advertising and employee expenses, which shot up significantly. More than 80% of the company’s revenue comes from selling goods (Medicines and related products). The sale of the services (consultation, diagnostics) contributes to the rest of the revenue.
Competitive landscape
According to Frost and Sullivan, Medlife owns 30% of the e-Pharma market share in India. Despite the competition, Medlife has the first-mover advantage in the industry. It is the first online pharmacy in the country to offer a whole gamut of medical services. The main competitors for the company are 1mg, Practo, Zoylo, and Netmeds. The company has recently announced its merger with rival Pharmeasy creating a $1 billion entity. Through this merger, Pharmeasy will acquire a 100% stake in smaller rival Medlife while Medlife will pick nearly 19.5% stake in Pharmeasy. Medlife has a competitive advantage over its competitors for providing competent value-added services by its complete range of services such as doctor consultation, lab tie-ups, patient record maintenance, customer support, healthcare-related blog, etc.
As per RedSeer consulting, India’s e-Pharma market will expand to $4.5 billion in FY21 compared to $1.2 billion in FY20. Reliance retail acquired a majority stake in Netmeds for INR 620 cr, marking its entry into the e-Pharma segment. The acquisition by Reliance comes when Amazon has started selling pharmaceutical products in Bengaluru markets through Amazon Pharmacy. Amazon has begun offering pharmacy services with online prescription fulfilment and free delivery for Prime members.
Flipkart has also entered the e-Pharma market by partnering with 1mg. The users can now order prescription medicines, book doctor’s consultations and lab tests within Flipkart. Owing to the pandemic, consumers are trying to limit their movement as much as possible. Consumer stickiness and average order increasing to $15-20 are also reasons for Amazon, Reliance, and Flipkart to enter this segment. Looking at the recent trends, the e-Pharma market in India will be closely contested for gaining market share.
Strategies
Mr. Ananth Narayanan, the current CEO, and co-founder has focused on strategies to scale up the business. He wants Medlife to be 10x in five years from now. Medlife focuses on digital marketing and comes up with hyper-local personalized content to target customers. The company leverages AI to segment customers based on product clusters, demography, and time spent on the platform. Medlife then develops hyper-local digital content for the cities they are present in and back it up with BTL as well as Radio. The company has a 50-50 mix of spends on mass media and digital. The company wants to improve the consumer experience and has launched a new react native app to reduce lead time for delivery. Mr. Narayanan intends to make the business sustainable by making each unit to reach economic breakeven. The company is looking to strengthen its 400 people team and to enhance its supply chain network to increase its market penetration.
Acquisitions
The company has also focused on some strategic acquisitions in recent years. In 2019, the company acquired Medlabz to further its reach into the diagnostic segment. In the same year, it has also acquired Myra. Through the acquisition, Medlife gained access to Myra’s express delivery segment and expanded its services to 22 cities in the coming months. In 2018, the company acquired EClinic. After this acquisition, the company leveraged both the firms’ technology to offer chat and video-based doctor consultation. These strategic acquisitions helped the company boost its revenue.
Ad campaigns
Medlife comes up with creative ad campaigns such as #GoodHealthisFreedom, which it launched ahead of independence day last year. As part of this campaign, the company created an online health calculator similar to a health risk assessment test. In 2017, Medlife unveiled its new branding and tagline- “Obsessed with health”; it highlighted Medlife’s brand value that gives importance to customer’s health while also giving them the benefit of better control, accessibility, and transparency.
During elections in 2019, Medlife launched the #HealthForTheNation campaign. The company has created health report cards for all 29 states, revealing startling gaps in doctor-patient ratio and other health parameters. Medlife also featured a new TVC highlighting its standing as a holistic healthcare provider. The new campaign unveiled the tagline “Health comes home” and showcased its various offerings with humorous messaging. The company also launched a humourous campaign, “Laffadu Lal,” which aims to showcase the ease, comfort, and convenience of ordering medicines online. The company also presented its unique features, such as monthly subscriptions for medications, in a light-hearted way. Through such ad campaigns, the company can attract the customer’s attention.
Conclusion
The COVID and subsequent lockdowns have forced people to move to online consultations, e-delivery of medicines, home sample collection for testing. With the Indian e-Pharma industry set for a giant leap with the likes of Amazon, Reliance, and Flipkart entering the segment, the company keeping technology and consumers at its core is likely to move ahead. Merger with Pharmeasy has strengthened the positioning of the brand. Medlife has expansion plans. It plans to open 750 retail pharmacies across India by 2020 end. The company is placed well to deliver healthcare services at the consumer’s fingertips.
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