Popular e-pharmacies in India:
- netmeds - India’s first online medicine delivery platform founded in 2010. In 2020, Reliance acquired a 60% stake.
- 1mg - HealthkartPlus, an offshoot of HealthKart was rebranded it as 1mg in April 2015. HealthKart was founded by 3 IIT Delhi grads, Prashant Tandon, Gaurav Agarwal, and Vikas Chauhan in 2011. Tata Digital acquired a majority stake in 1mg in 2021.
- Pharmeasy - founded in 2015. Entered the unicorn club in 2021.
- Apollo Pharmacy
- Medplus Mart
- Amazon Pharmacy
- Flipkart Health+
Only 54% of India's e-pharmacies demonstrated compliance with country's 14 proposed standards according to a comprehensive study conducted by researchers from The George Institute for Global Health in Hyderabad which evaluated 61 websites and 30 mobile apps.
India currently lacks specific binding regulations, relying instead on draft bills and guidelines.
In the traditional model, distributors retain a margin of 8-12%, while pharmacy stores take a margin of 15-20% on each sale. Collectively this results in a total margin consumption of 30-35% between the two. E-pharmacies on the other hand, pass on 20-30% of this margin to the consumer.