Making health care accessible, inexpensive, & genuine to its customers, Soul Pharmacy has everything you need
Divyankan Gupta, Founder
The Indian E-pharmacy Market size exceeded $2 billion in 2021 and is anticipated to witness over 16.8 percent CAGR from 2022 to 2028 consequent to the growing penetration of e-pharmacy platforms across the world coupled with increasing awareness regarding services offered by e-Pharmacy. Customers now prefer using e-Pharmacy platforms because of their convenience, high-quality services, accessibility to a variety of pharmaceuticals, and ease of purchase. A sharp rise in smartphone adoption is anticipated to fuel the global market as it gives e-Pharmacy businesses access to a diverse consumer base. An omni-channel pharmacy, Soul Pharmacy offers a variety of pharmaceutical services and goods to customers in the Delhi NCR area. Making health care accessible, inexpensive, and genuine to its customers, Soul Pharmacy has everything you need, whether you're looking for medications, lab tests, covid care, ayurveda, homeopathic, or general wellness items.
We learn more about the company in an exclusive interview with Divyankan Gupta, Founder of Soul Pharmacy. Here are the highlights from our interaction.
How do you see the market for the pharma industry evolving in India? What are the major factors driving the growth of this market?
Considering that we haven't yet reached the rural population, I think the pharmaceutical market is likely to grow at a very good speed. Secondly, because patients who were waiting for consultation may now get consultations through telecalling and video consultation, the number of prescriptions is going to treble, or maybe quadruple in the next five years. Another factor contributing to growth is that people are now more conscious of their health and the importance of taking preventative medicine as a result of COVID.
What are the major expectations of clients from online pharmacy companies? How do you meet those expectations?
The main need of customers is the requirement to have faith in a company to provide the appropriate medication at the appropriate time. In order to achieve that, last-mile deliveries and dark storefronts are necessary to ensure that clients receive all the medications they need. Additionally, customers of online pharmacies place a high value on availability since they still believe that local pharmacies offer better access to medications. We are opening dark stores to accommodate demand, and working on last-mile delivery through which we can serve our consumers in less than five hours.
Please elaborate on the wide range of services that you offer to customers. What are the major differentiating factors that set you apart from other players in this segment?
We are a full-range pharmacy, offering medicines, FMCG, surgical items, and homeopathic medicines, including some exclusively available at our pharmacy. In the coming months, we are launching 30-minute deliveries in Delhi-NCR. We also offer home delivery through whatsapp orders and our service is available from 8:30 am to 10:30 pm. Further, we offer flexible delivery of medicine so the customer doesn't have to worry about returns. Our biggest differentiating factor is that we are completely customer-centric. We make sure any medicine required by the customer is procured and delivered within the promised time no matter where we have to procure it from. Secondly, we believe in the omnichannel presence and in hiring the right set of staff and pharmacists so that the customer finds us reliable. Lastly, we ensure that the availability of medicines is 100 percent, thereby providing better convenience and honest discounts.
Making health care accessible, inexpensive, & genuine to its customers, Soul Pharmacy has everything you needDivyankan Gupta, Founder
Shed some light on the challenges you face and how you overcome them.
While we face many challenges, being in a competitive space, acquiring customer trust remains the biggest and most time-taking challenge. To add to it, since there are a lot of online pharmacies offering tons of discounts, and unrealistic discounts, that adds another challenge. This is not a healthy practice for the firms and the industry as a whole because these margins are not sustainable, thereby leading the customer to distrust online pharmacies again and go back to local pharmacies as soon as the discounts are minimized or canceled. Thus, it is important for all players to understand the need to build trust and offer honest, reasonable, and sustainable discounts to the customers. As a result of which we have been able to scale our annual revenue to a $5million business.
What is the future roadmap for Soul Pharmacy? How is the company gearing up for the same?
We are focusing on expanding in rural areas right now. We have predominantly been in the Delhi-NCR region so far and are now expanding to have a PAN-India presence. As mentioned, we are also working to bring 30-minute deliveries in the next few months, probably being the first to introduce this concept. We will also be opening 20 more stores in the coming year. While the market has been slow to grow on account of Covid, we are now seeing it pick up again gradually, and see hyper-growth in the coming years reaching upto a double digit multi-million dollar annual revenue. We have started another company by the name of Medio which will enable us to deliver medicines in 30 minutes.
