Aiming to expand their online pharmacy and launch new digital health products, healthcare start-up 1mg Technologies Pvt. Ltd has raised Rs.100 crore in a Series B funding round from Maverick Capital Ventures, besides existing investors Sequoia Capital and Omidyar Network.
Prashant Tandon, co-founder and chief executive at 1mg, said, “India has one of the highest populations of chronic patients in the world, and yet access to quality and affordable healthcare is limited. Our app allows customers to access knowledge about substitutes that can often save 80-90% on healthcare bills.”
The company also revealed in a statement that apart from expansion, the fund will be used to launch digital health products such as smart prescriptions and personalized health feeds for consumers.
“Additionally, our e-pharmacy platform enables users to transact and purchase these medicines and have them home-delivered. Ours more recently launched e-diagnostics service aims to bring a similar transparency to the lab tests market,” he added.
This is the venture capital arm of US-based hedge fund Maverick Capital’s first investment in the Indian healthcare space.
In their earlier funding last year, 1mg had raised $6 million from Sequoia Capital, Intel Capital, Omidyar Network and Deep Kalra, co-founder of travel portal MakeMyTrip.
The company operates an online marketplace for medicines, besides facilitating doctor appointments and diagnostic test booking. According to their website, 1mg has a database of about 100,000 medicines with detailed information on their side effects and composition.
Earlier known as HealthkartPlus, 1mg was rebranded on April last year when the HealthkartPlus spun off into a separate entity.
The funding will surely help 1mg to fend off competition from rivals Practo Technologies Pvt. Ltd, whose last fund raised was $124 million from investors such as Tencent, Sofina, Google Capital and Altimeter Capital.
Watch the HealthKart & 1mg story on My Big Plunge Episode in association with Economic Times –
