E-pharmacy startup Myra Manages funds for expansion in new markets

Bengaluru: Myra Medicine, a Bengaluru based online pharmacy, promising doorstep delivery of medicines in 30 minutes with 15 per cent discount has managed to rope in Matrix Partners and Times Internet, a part of the Times group to invest Together around $7-8 million in their project, it is learnt.

The idea of Myra Medicines stemmed from problem faced by residents of Bengaluru due to inaccessibility of medicines at a time of need. In order to solve this problem and to shorten delivery time using technology and data science Team of Myra Medicines took a decision to launch Myra in April 2015.

Myra Medicines works with 40 distributors across the country and it verifies all licences before dealing with the distributors. One can place order through myramed app, SMS or call. Once the order gets forwarded to their closet dispatch centre, it is then checked and reaches the customer in 30 minutes. At present the company is clocking about 1,000 orders per day and plans to grow by three to four times in the next nine months. The company employs, directly and indirectly, about 300 people and plans to take that up to 900 by end of the year.

Myra runs on a full-stack model wherein it has a drug license and registered pharmacists who validate the authenticity of each prescription before dispensing medicines. With the latest funds in, Myra is planning to enter new metro cities in addition to Bengaluru where it had been operating since inception. While speaking to TOI Faizan Aziz, founder and CEO, Myra said "We are looking to start operations in Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderbad, Pune while we deepen our network within Bengaluru." In India, where pharmacy retail market has been largely dominated by physical stores growing adoption of e-commerce platforms is likely to modify purchasing patterns of medicines.

Tarun Davda, MD at Matrix Partners, said the current customer experience is broken at the fundamental level despite advances in technology for the $15 billion Indian pharma market. "Myra takes a high frequency use case and makes it super easy for users to access a pharmacy digitally," said Miten Sampat, VP-corporate development, Times Internet

As many as 140 startups are currently operating in the online pharmacy market, with 18 of them having managed to raise funds. Around $110 million has been poured into these startups with the likes of NetMeds, PharmEasy and 1mg emerging as the most well funded companies in the sector, data from Tracxn pointed out.