PharmEasy wins CNBC-TV18’s IBLA Young Turk of the Year Award

PharmEasy was selected as the Young Turk of the Year at CNBC-TV18’s 17th Indian Business Leader Awards (IBLA).

It hasn’t taken long for API Holdings, the parent company of online pharmacy startup PharmEasy and diagnostic chain Thyrocare, to establish itself as the largest player in online healthcare.

The young founders of PharmEasy are firmly in the ring, ready for the big fight that lies ahead in India’s e-healthcare space, where giants like Tata-backed 1mg, Apollo Hospital, Reliance-Netmed and Amazon, too, are in the game.

PharmEasy’s purpose is clear: it wants to be the one go-to platform for medical information, consultation, diagnostics and medication. And its founders are united in their goals.

“There is a tonne of implicit trust that we have in each other,” CEO Siddharth Shah once said, referring to relations between the startup’s founders. That faith serves them well in the online healthcare space, estimated to be a $1.9 billion market, where competition has now intensified.

The moniker of  ‘Ghatkopar Gujju Gang,’ which is how the founders often refer to themselves, also carries a deep sense of camaraderie and purpose and, Shah suggests, a “significant management bandwidth.”

The acquisition of Thyrocare last year seems to be strengthening their business focus. The transaction also conveyed the boldness of founders, considering that a more established and listed entity run by first-generation founder A Velumani chose to merge with a new-age company born only 10 years ago.

Macquarie underscored last year that the core competency of e-pharmacies lies in their tech platform and the ability to generate leads. PharmEasy is a solid player in that sense. It claims to have more than 60,000 physical pharmacies and 4,000 doctors across 16,000 pin code zones in India. The company says it has served more than 20 million customers so far.

API Holdings owns a bouquet of brands including PharmEasy, Thyrocare, Docon, Retailio, and Aknamed. PharmEasy became the first unicorn in the e-pharmacy startup space by attaining a valuation of more than $1 billion.

All this value creation reflects in the numbers as well, with the e-pharmacy startup now worth $5.6 billion, if one goes by a funding round in October last year. The next destination for API Holdings is Dalal Street, and the company has already filed draft papers to raise about Rs 6,250 crore through an IPO.