NEW DELHI: Generico, a Mumbai-based pharmacy retail startup exclusively selling low-cost generic medicines, has raised $3 million in Series A funding from early stage investment funds Tomorrow Capital and Whiteboard Capital, and angel investor Gagan Goyal.
The startup, currently operating 20 brick-and-mortar pharmacies in Mumbai, will use the funds to expand to 100 stores in Mumbai, Pune and some cities in Gujarat over the next 10 months, its founders Siddharth Gadia and Girish Agarwal told ET.
Generico plans to raise more funds within a year, they said. “We want to have a sustainable business model running in Mumbai first and then expand to other cities,” Gadia said.
Using a model similar to the pharmacies under the Jan Aushadhi scheme, Generico said its medicines are priced around 8-10 times lower than the maximum retail price. “In Jan Aushadhi, the supply is controlled by the government, so they have limited portfolio,” Agarwal said. “We try to have private participation so we can provide a better portfolio.” The founders also pointed out that Generico is focused on regions where Jan Aushadhi stores don’t exist.
Rohini Prakash of Tomorrow Capital said, “There is going to be a huge movement from the unorganised to organised sector in the consumer segment and this will apply to retail pharma as well. We believe that Generico has the right team and business model to reduce the impact of out-of-pocket expenditure on healthcare and, therefore, the potential to build a huge, very scalable, very valuable business.”
