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An online pharmacy internet pharmacy, or mail-order pharmacy is a pharmacy that operates over the Internet and sends orders to customers through mail, shipping companies, or online pharmacy web portals. 1mg is a digital consumer healthcare platform, or an online pharmacy center, that makes healthcare accessible, understandable, and affordable.
1mg was launched in April 2015 after Healthkart separated its generic drug search business, HealthkartPlus, and rebranded it as 1mg. It allows users to find information about medicines prescribed by doctors and also buy it online. Users can find medicines by ailments, class, companies, and brands.
Let’s go through Tata 1mg’s Startup Story and get a glance at Tata 1mg funding, business model, company profile, turnover, growth, revenue model, founders & more.
1mg – Company Highlights
| Startup Name | Tata 1mg |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Gurugram, Haryana, India |
| Industry | Healthcare |
| Founded | 2013 |
| Founders | Prashant Tandon, Gaurav Agarwal, Vikas Chauhan |
| CEO | Prashant Tandon |
| Area Served | India |
| Website | www.1mg.com |
About Tata 1mg and How it Works?
Tata 1mg – Logo and its Meaning
Tata 1mg – Founder and History
Tata 1mg – Mission
Tata 1mg – Business Model
Tata 1mg – Revenue and Growth
Tata 1mg – Funding and Investors
Tata 1mg – Acquisitions
Tata 1mg – Competitors
Tata 1mg – Awards and Recognitions
Tata 1mg – Challenges Faced
Tata 1mg – Future Plans
Tata 1mg – About and How it Works?
Tata 1mg is a developer of an online drug delivery platform intended to make healthcare accessible, understandable, and affordable.
The company delivers medicines and health products online along with lab test booking, online consultations, and authentic information from healthcare professionals, thereby enabling customers to meet all their healthcare needs in one platform hassle-free.
1mg.com brings to us, an online platform, which can be assessed for all our health needs. With AI being hailed as the technology of the future, every startup is trying to adapt it in some capacity to streamline and optimize their offerings. Tata 1mg recently started offering a feature, ‘Ask a Doctor,’ which is an intuitive chatbot that asks questions to accurately identify what the problem may be and shows the medicinal specializations under which the ailment may fall. Users can choose from one of them and a doctor, who can diagnose the problem via chat, is assigned to you.
Tata Digital, a subsidiary of Tata Sons Private Ltd. acquired a major stake in 1mg to further widen the former’s digital offerings on June 10, 2021. Though the amount is still not disclosed by the source, the total valuation of 1mg was $400 million.
Tata 1mg had the highest number of downloads (184.2K) among telemedicine startups during Jan 1-Feb 10, 2021, as per AppTweak data. It has invested in expanding its cold chain and in contact with vaccine makers for partnerships to participate in COVID-19 vaccination (when the government allows the private sector to get in)
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Tata 1mg – Logo and its Meaning
Tata 1mg is all about medicines and the basic unit for a medicine’s strength is measured in milligrams (mg). And to top it all, 1 MG Road was where the company’s first office was located.
Tata 1mg – Founder and History
Gurugram-headquartered e-pharmacy startup Tata 1mg (earlier as HealthKartPlus) was founded by Prashant Tandon, Gaurav Agarwal, and Vikas Chauhan in 2013.
The website was started as HealthKartPlus, a platform for users to have all the information about the medicines. The platform became so popular and got a huge response from the public and users asked the company to start the delivery of the medicines too. Thus, Tata 1mg was started.
Tata 1mg was launched in April 2015 after Healthkart separated its generic drug search business, HealthkartPlus, and rebranded it as 1mg. The company has three business verticals — Pharmaceuticals, Labs, and Doctors.
Gurmeet Walia
Tata 1mg – Mission
The company’s mission is to make healthcare accessible, understandable, and affordable for one billion Indians through a comprehensive website and mobile app. Tata 1mg enables consumers to learn more about their medicines in addition to finding more cost-effective substitutes.
Tata 1mg – Business Model
Tata 1mg provides services like diagnostics, medicine, preventive healthcare, and online Q&A to its users. Apart from this, they also have native ads on their platforms for pharma companies. In the past year, The company has expanded its pharmacies to 600 cities and also expanded its product range to include homeopathy and Ayurveda range.
The company used its app to spread information on medicines. They are using push notifications and emails to expand and let people know that they are living in their city. The company also uses offline advertisements depending on the city. They use newspaper advertisements and health camps to spread information. However, a majority of their marketing is digital.
Tata 1mg makes money with online diagnostics and lab testing services. These account for a majority of their annual revenues. Online medicine delivery, B2B healthcare solutions, and subscription-based care plans form up the rest of their yearly finances.
Tata 1mg – Revenue and Growth
| Tata 1mg Financials | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Operating Revenue | INR 1627 crore | INR 1968 crore |
| Total Expenses | INR 2894 crore | INR 2303 crore |
| Profit/Loss | INR -1255 crore | INR -313 crore |
In FY24, Tata 1mg’s operating revenue increased by approximately 21%, rising from INR 1627 crore in FY23 to INR 1968 crore. Total expenses decreased by about 20%, dropping from INR 2894 crore to INR 2303 crore. As a result, losses reduced significantly by nearly 75%, improving from INR 1255 crore to INR 313 crore.
EBITDA
| FY23 | FY24 | |
|---|---|---|
| EBITDA Margin | -71.66% | -10.85% |
| Expense/₹ of Op Revenue | ₹1.78 | ₹1.17 |
| ROCE | -341.99 | NA |
Tata 1mg saw strong and steady growth in FY23 without spending too much cash. FY23 was also its first full year under Tata Digital.
1mg’s operating revenue jumped 2.5 times to INR 1,627 crore in FY23, up from INR 627 crore in FY22, as per its financial reports. Earlier, in FY22, the company had nearly doubled its revenue from INR 309 crore in FY21.
As per regulatory filings, Tata 1mg’s total revenue was INR 369.3 crore in FY20, which is over a 77% jump from the company’s revenue which stood at INR 209.1 crore in FY19.
Selling medicines online hasn’t been all easy as this space witnessed regulatory challenges back in 2019. While the Delhi High Court had ordered all state governments to ban the online sale of medicines in January last year, the central drug regulator had asked states to enforce a court directive prohibiting online medicine sales this month.
Amidst this regulatory uncertainty, Gurugram-based Tata 1mg has demonstrated decent growth with a 2.8X jump in operating revenue. Registering 180% growth, it has posted a total operating revenue of INR 240.85 crore.
The company collected Rs 39.45 crore from offering marketplace services and INR 68.3 crore through online diagnostics and lab testing services in the year ending March 2019. It also made INR 67.8 lakhs from collection charges.
Importantly, the overall revenue from services grew 90.2% from INR 41.8 crores in FY18 to INR 79.5 crores in FY19. All services together accounted for a little over one-third of the total revenues generated by Tata 1mg during last fiscal in 2019.
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Tata 1mg – Funding and Investors
Tata 1mg has raised a total of $230.8 million in funding over 16 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Sep 6, 2022 from a Corporate Round led by Tata Digital. This funding round made Tata 1mg a unicorn as the company was valued $1.25 and $1.30 billion after raising $40 million in funding. Tata 1mg is funded by 10 lead investors. Tata Digital is the most recent investor.
Tata 1mg funding details are as follows –
| Date | Round | Amount | Lead Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| September 6, 2022 | Corporate Round | $40M | Tata Digital |
| April 19, 2021 | Debt Financing | $13.3M | Tata Group |
| Jul 3, 2020 | Debt Financing | $17.8M | – |
| Jan 31, 2020 | Venture Round | $9.48M | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation |
| Jun 28, 2019 | Series D | $70M | Corisol Holding AG, International Finance Corporation |
| Apr 5, 2019 | Series D | $10.3M | Redwood Global Healthcare Fund |
| Jan 1, 2019 | Venture Round | – | InnoVen Capital |
| Mar 1, 2018 | Series C | $10.1M | Maverick Ventures |
| Jul 26, 2017 | Series C | $15M | HBM Healthcare Investments AG |
| Jul 1, 2017 | Series C | $12.2M | – |
| Jun 30, 2017 | Venture Round | $10M | HBM Healthcare Investments AG, Sequoia Capital India |
| May 31, 2016 | Venture Round | – | HBM Healthcare Investments AG |
| April, 2021 | Debt Financing | $13.35M | Tata Digital |
Tata 1mg – Acquisitions
Tata 1mg has acquired 3 organizations. Their most recent acquisition was Dawailelo on Sep 1, 2017.
| Acquiree Name | Date | Amount | About Acquiree |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dawailelo | Sep 1, 2017 | – | Dawailelo is a Varanasi-based healthcare startup that helps people connect with medical stores |
| MediAngels | Dec 14, 2016 | – | MediAngels delivers healthcare globally |
| Medd.in | July 5, 2016 | – | Medd.in is an online platform to book diagnostic and imaging tests |
Tata 1mg – Competitors
Tata 1mg’s top competitors are Netmeds, Practo, Medlife, PharmEasy, Metarain Distributors Private Limited, HealthKart, CareOnGo, mChemist and BookMEDS.
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Tata 1mg – Awards and Recognitions
In 2014, just a year after they started off, Tata 1mg won the m-billionth award for m-health in South Asia. They were also recognized as the most promising healthcare startup by News Corp VCCircle. In 2016, Tata 1mg was acknowledged as the Best App in the medical category by Gmasa.
They also won the award for the best online pharmacy in India at the International Quality Awards. They achieved the title ‘New Kid on the Block’ at the NDTV Unicorn Awards in the same year.
Tata 1mg was recognized as one of the Top 50 ventures in the Smart CEO-Startup50 India 2017 program. By the year 2017, the company had grown by 600% in terms of the success of the Tata 1mg app and user engagement. They expanded their product range to encompass Ayurvedic medicines and homeopathy.
Within the years 2016 and 2017, the company had raised 37 million dollars through 5 rounds of funding. In 2018, Tata 1mg won the BML Munjal Award for ‘Business Excellence through Learning and Development’. During the Content Leadership Awards in 2018, they won the title ‘Best Content in a Healthcare/Fitness App’. Tata 1mg was also recognized as the ‘Best Mobile Innovation for Health award ‘ at the India Mobile Congress.
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Tata 1mg – Challenges Faced
1mg was initially started as HealthKartPlus, a platform that aggregated medical information and sold alternative medicine to its users. The platform caught up quickly with the users and soon the users began asking for delivery of medicines to be included as well. At a time when information and awareness about medicines and lab tests were either minimal or non-existent, 1mg aimed to change it.
Tata 1mg has a system in place where they onboard vendors onto the platform if they meet certain requirements like computerized inventory and invoicing, which makes end-to-end tracking easier for the customer. The startup can generate business even after strict government compliances which banned online pharmacies by making a prescription mandatory to make a purchase.
Tata 1mg – Future Plans
Aggressively moving towards its expansion plans, Tata 1mg has decided to expand the scope of its platform and is entering the alternate medicine space (AYUSH categories) through the acquisition of Homeobuy.com. Homeobuy is a web platform for homeopathy medicines.
With this acquisition, Tata 1mg will re-brand the website to www.1mgAyush.com and make homeopathic & ayurvedic medicines available to customers in New Delhi. The Indian government has also been actively supporting and developing the AYUSH categories, as a strong system of medicine that has evolved over a long period of time.
After Tata Digital’s acquisition of the majority stakes in Tata 1mg, the company announced that they are looking forward to promising 60-minute deliveries in selected locations around the country. Tata 1mg is known for 4-5 hour deliveries in a bunch of locations, which will also be extended to other locations as well.
“We are the platform that stands for consumer health and we believe the alternate forms of medicines are equally important. Having seen the importance of these alternative forms of medicines and our government’s support in promoting them, we aim at creating an exhaustive platform for all health solutions. The business will continue to work on a marketplace network model and partner with quality vendors in this sector,” said Prashant Tandon.
FAQs
What is 1mg?
1mg is a digital consumer healthcare platform that makes healthcare accessible, understandable, and affordable. It allows users to find information about medicines prescribed by doctors and also buy them. Users can find drugs by ailments, class, companies, and brands.
Who is Tata 1mg founder?
Prashant Tandon, Gaurav Agarwal, and Vikas Chauhan are the founders of 1 mg company.
Who is the CEO of 1mg?
Prashant Tandon is the CEO & Co-Founder at 1mg.
How does 1mg make money?
1mg makes money with online diagnostics and lab testing services. These account for a majority of their annual revenues. Online medicine delivery, B2B healthcare solutions, and subscription-based care plans form up the rest of their yearly finances.
Is 1mg an Indian company?
Yes, 1mg is India’s leading consumer health platform.
How do you order medication 1mg?
You can send the list of medicines, your full address, contact number, and valid prescription to order@1mg.com.
Does Tata 1mg provides franchise opportunity?
Tata 1mg provides a franchise model, enabling individuals to partner with the brand and open their own 1mg store.
