Biddano aims to expand into 52 cities by year-end

A healthcare supply platform – Biddano is looking to expand to 52 cities by year-end, trebling its reach from 15 cities at present. Pharmacy channels are becoming more organized and adopting online technology to address last-mile distribution issues. Biddano onboarded over 100 Super-Stockists and 50,000 pharmacies during the last calendar year, cross gross merchandise value of $100 million+ so far.

Talha Shaikh, co-founder and CEO at Biddano, said that during the pandemic, the major challenge that many pharmacists faced was the unavailability of products and unreliability in deliveries. “Because of Biddano, they could entirely rely on timely fulfilments. Many distributors and pharmacists could steadily grow and improve their revenue because we have taken care of the supply chain issues,” Shaikh said. “We impact the healthcare supply chain through our main products – Bkart and Shortbuk.”

Biddano, which was founded in 2016 by Shaikh and Ashok Yadav, pivoted to the business-to-business model two years later. The company now connects local super-stockists with pharmacies, hospitals, labs and fulfills orders in under three hours. It uses a plug-and-expand model to help stockists manage their demand and supply, while expanding their geographical reach. Biddano has also partnered with non-banking finance companies to provide an extended credit line to the pharmacies.

During the first wave of COVID-19, retailers including general trade stores and pharmacies witnessed supply chain disruptions due to restrictions in the movement of goods and labor crunch despite falling under essential categories. As such, Biddano had to ease its delivery process and reduce inventory cycles to help pharmacists increase their business and ensure timely procurement.

Shaikh acknowledged that pharmacies have been at the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Biddano’s vision is to empower and impact every stakeholder in the healthcare supply chain with a razor-sharp focus on providing advanced tech systems and delivery infrastructure, which is the need of the hour,” he said. “Sales return percentage has drastically declined from 11% to 2%, while inventory cycles were reduced from 15 days to three hours for pharmacies.”

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Bkart is a tech-enabled healthcare logistics platform. It consolidates and reduces delivery turnaround time from 24-hours to under three hours. Shortbuk is a new age comprehensive daily procurement platform for fast-moving consumer goods and over-the-counter products. Biddano said both platforms solved real-time challenges from order tracking and delivery to strengthening cash flow and even upselling and cross-selling, improving overall demand generation.