Healthcare
E-pharmacies need an offline-online model for efficient delivery mechanism: Sumit Goel
09 Jul 2021
In an interaction with ETHealthworld, Sumit Goel, Managing Partner and Head – Healthcare and Pharma and Life Sciences, Praxis Global Alliance, discusses how the COVID pandemic has boosted the scope of E-pharmacy in India. Edited Excerpts:
Q: The E-pharmacy has grown tremendously in recent years, do you agree the COVID pandemic has been a major contributor to this upward push?
Sumit Goel: Online pharmacy has evolved over the last couple of years wading through regulatory uncertainties. As the COVID-19 lockdown was imposed, the online pharmacies received the much-needed impetus with the Government itself declaring delivery of medicine through E-commerce as essential services. As per estimates, the number of households using E-pharmacy services grew 2.5 times to 9 million during COVID times.
Q: Do you expect companies and E-pharmacies to expand their offering through digital platforms even post COVID era?
Sumit Goel: Key players in this segment have significantly expanded their customer base during the COVID period and have expanded the product and service offerings to keep up with the needs of the expanded customer base. The core focus has been to increase the customer LTV by catering to customer’s healthcare needs in a comprehensive way. We see many online pharmacies have started offering services such as E-consultation, E-diagnostics, and retailing of health and wellness products on their platform.