Competitor analysis of the online medicine market to improve understanding of the industry.

Online Pharmacy includes E – health sites, websites of pharmacy shops and various internet linked vendors that sells medicine. Some of the major players in the online medicine space

▪ Netmeds

▪ 1mg

▪ Apollo Pharmeasy

▪ Healthkart

▪ Practo

▪ Myramed

▪ mChemist

▪ Savemymeds

▪ Medplus Smart

▪Bookmeds

PharmEasy Overview

Company Essence	Order Medicine online, Book Lab Tests, Order Health Care Products
Parent Entity	API Holdings
CEO	Mr.Dharmil Sheth
Funding	Total – 328.5 millions
Acquisition	Acquired Medlife on August 18, 2020 for $1.2 billion.
Target Segment	Urban Family, Mass-produced
Category	Medicine, Diagnostics Test, Chronic Care Products, Healthcare Products.
Private Brand	Medlife Wellness Retail Pvt Ltd., Everhurb, Liveasy
Revenue Model	Sponsored Listings Model, Advertisement Model, Commission Model.

PharmEasy – Competitors

Business Model	Direct	Indirect
Market Place	Netmeds, 1mg	Retail/Medical Store practo
Healthcare Products Seller	Amazon, Flipkart	-
Private Labels	Patanjali, Apollo Pharmeasy	-

Pain Points of PharmEasy,1mg, Netmeds

Company	Online order	Doctor consultation	Diagnostic Tests	Healthcare Device	Healthcare Subscriptions	Ayurvedic Products	Alternate Brand Suggestions	Homeopathy Products	Insurance
PharmEasy	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	No	No	No
1mg	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Netmeds	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No

Company Backgrounds

Points	PharmEasy	1mg	Netmeds
Founder	Mr.Dharmil Sheth	Mr.Prashant Tandon	Mr. Pradeep Dadha
Founded on	2015	2015	2010
Parent Company	API Holdings	Sequoia Capital	Reliance aretail
No.of Employees	1000+	750+	325+
Total Funding	$ 328.5 M	$ 173.5 M	$ 99 M
No.of Investors	18 (series D)	13	4 (Series c)
Acquisitions	1 (Medlife)	2 (MediAngels, Dawailelo)	3 (KiviHealth, Just Doc, Plus App)

Target Customers

Company	Strategies	Product
PharmEasy	No prescriptions then gives free consultation, promotes own brand.	Medicines, Lab Tests
1mg	Sell subscriptions, promote substitute medicines	Medicines, lab tests, health products, online doctor consultation, insurance
Netmeds	Sell subscriptions, promote substitute medicines	Medicines, lab tests, health products, online doctor consultation

Business Model – PharmEasy

Business and Products	Prescribed Medicines, Lab Tests, No prescriptions – free consultation , over the counter drug Private Labels i.e, Everhurb, LivEasy
Business Model	Franchise + Partnership
Value-added services	Health Experts Advice Blogs (English), Digital storage of health records
Geographical reach	Deliver the productsat 22000+ pincodes in more than 100 cities, 2M+ Indian families served
Target Customers	Urban family especially in south india and english speaking people
Revenue	Average Order Value – RS. 965/-, Average Order Frequency – 1.50 from users in a month, Market Share – 18%
Revenue Model	Sponsered Listings, advertisements, Commissions, Hign margin on own brands

Business Model – 1mg

Business and Products	Subscription based Selling, Promotes Substitute Medicines, Lab Tests, Paid Consultations, over the counter drug private labels – 1mg Ayush, 1mglabs
Business Model	Only Partnership
Value – added Services	Health Experts Advice Blogs – both in English and Hindi
Geographical reach	25M+ Orders Delivered in 1000+ cities
Target Customers	Urban families especially in north India and Hindi speaking people
Revenue	Average Order Value – RS. 792, Average Order Frequency – 1.40 from users in a month, Market Share – 29%
Revenue Model	Sponsored Listings, Advertisements, Commissions, High margins on own brands

Shifts in the business model – PharmEasy

1. PharmEasy was started to deliver medicine online but after seeing the market demand, it started providing lab tests and health packages to the customers.

2. Offline pharmacies like retail shops are currently responsible for 99% of the medicine sales per year, while e-epharmacy contributes only 1% of total medicine sale in India.(source - https://www.pharmatutor.org/articles/currentstatus-of-e-pharmacy-in-india-2019-review). The biggest reason for this is most of the pharmacy stores sells medicine without any prescription and even customers feels its expensive to meet or consult a doctor.

3. PharmEasy started providing free consultation to customers, where customers need to select the medicines and the pharmeasy will provide free doctor consultant before delivering the medicine.

Strengths and Weaknesses – PharmEasy

Strengths	Weaknesses
Largest network	Less control on delivery agents
Strong pricing control and high margin on some products because of its own healthcare product brands.	There are many large and existing healthcare product brands available, so need to face a strong competition with them
Strong pool of satisfied customers, where 43.30% of customers visits webpage direct on their sites.	Need to improve SEO and presence on social media

Strengths and Weaknesses – 1mg

Strengths	Weaknesses
Good network with insurance providers	Relatively a new market entrant
Strong financial backing of sequoia capital	Need to increase cities coverage and setup teams to lower delivery time
Top player in Homeopathy products	New entrant in less lucrative market
Strong SEO, where 70.57% traffic from search and 26.51% traffic directly	Need to improve customer retention rate.

Competitive Analysis – Performance

Specification	PharmEasy	1mg
Products	In 3+ space	In 5+ spaces
Return Policy	30 days	7 days
Delivery Time	1 to 7 days1 to 7 days	2 to 7 days
Play Store Downloads	5M+	10M+
Play Store Ratings	4.5 (209k reviews) on playstore, 4.4 on App store	4.4 (319k reviews)on playstore, 4.7 on App store
App Features	Search healthcare products from 10 categories, Refills reminder	Search medicines from more than 34 categories, book appointments, pill reminder
Social media profile	98095 followers on FB	186559 followers on FB
No.of website visitors per day	Overall visits per month – 1785703, Average visit duration - 04:03 minutes, Page visits – 4.477, Bounce Rate – 64.76%.	Overall visits per month – 9426242, Average visit duration – 04:14, Page visits – 2.762, Bounce Rate – 60.37%.
Alexa ranks and Traffic Sources	#881 in India, 58% traffic from google search	#219 in India, 70.57% traffic from google
Leader boards on IOS and Playstore	#11 on Playstore, #4 on App store in medical	#1 on Playstore, #3on Appstore in medical

Prediction – Future initiatives 1mg

1. After PharmEasy acquire Medlife, they become the single largest competitor in epharmacy. Their combined market share has become more than 45% with the largest pool of doctors, labs and pharmacies. Now, it can be reduce the delivery time to 1 day or even shorter. Netmeds is acquired by RIL and Amazon has launched Amazon Pharmacy. Now, online pharmacy players will have to face a strong competition.

2. To compete with strong financial backing companies, 1mg will have to setup teams from scratch to reach the new cities and deliver the products faster in the existing cities.They also has to work on cutting the cost of delivery.

3. Now, to add new customers and improve the retention rate, it may start approaching the customers in different ways. It may release the application in local languages tp add a new set of customers.