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This 5 year old Startup acquired a 25 year old publicly listed Organization

Pallavi Agarwal
3 min readJun 28, 2021

Healthcare has become one of India’s largest sectors, both in terms of wealth and employment.

In the recent past, we witnessed how technology pervaded healthcare to initiate services like e-pharmacy, telemedicine, mental health, personal health management, home healthcare, and others but both doctors and users have been slow in getting used to the new normal.

And the novel Coronavirus or Covid-19 disrupted this already growing segment to a tipping point. Covid-19 pushed the market and the ecosystem to get out of their comfort zone and embrace the change leading to widespread adoption of these services. The immediate response to this crisis has been causing seismic shifts in the way healthcare services are being consumed and provided.

In what looks like one of the biggest deals in the Indian diagnostic sector yet, PharmEasy on June 25,2021 acquired a 66.1 percent stake in Thyrocare Technologies Ltd (Thyrocare) for a consideration of INR 4,546 crore. This combination of PharmEasy and Thyrocare makes a valuable fit because most of the customers who buy medicines on e-pharmacies are people with chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension, and they might need frequent testing as well. PharmEasy can possibly leverage this by offering a subscription model combining tele-health services, medicines and diagnostics, all in one solution.

With this trend, startups are proving that startups’ age, like human age, should be viewed as — ‘Biological & Chronological’. Chronologically some startups are young but biologically they are mature and have the muscle to carry decade old organizations.

Founded in 2015, PharmEasy parent company API Holdings (API) has been looking to establish a significant presence across the entire out-patient healthcare value chain through services such as tele-consultation, diagnostics, medicine delivery and pharmaceutical supply chain. The parent company operates brands such as PharmEasy, RetailIO, DocOn, with PharmEasy being the consumer-facing brand. PharmEasy is a health care delivery platform that simplifies and modernizes the pharmacy health care setup in India. The platform helps patients to stay connected with various local pharmacy stores and outlets. PharmEasy is leveraging…

Pallavi Agarwal

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