PharmEasy to raise Rs 3,500 cr via rights issue: Report

Pharmacy chain PharmEasy will raise Rs 3,500 crore through a rights issue next week, according to media reports. The funds raised by the issue will help the company in repaying a big chunk of its loans to Goldman Sachs.

Temasek Holdings, TPG, Prosus, CDPQ, Eight Roads, LGT, Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund ADQ, Amansa, OrbiMed and Sunil Kant Munjal's family office have already committed to invest as much as Rs 2,000 crore, the report added.

Set up in 2015 Dharmil Sheth, Mikhil Innani, and Dhaval Shah as a subsidiary of Ascent Health, PharmEasy is a health tech startup offering services such as teleconsultation, medicine deliveries, and diagnostic test sample collections. 

PharmEasy connects the chemist shops, wholesalers, medical device companies, diagnostic labs, hospitals with the consumers to reach 25 million registered users, covering 97 per cent pin code coverage of India. There are 87,000 pharmacies, 3,200 wholesalers and 4,600 doctors registered on PharmEasy marketplace.

The Mumbai-headquartered company has made three acquisitions so far including Aknamed, Thyrocare and Netmeds in 2021. The thyrocare acquisition cost was $613 million, according to Owler. Additionally, it has raised $1.3 billion (Rs 10,790) via multiple rounds of fundings, to date. 

Its revenue stood at $720 million (Rs 5,729 crore) in the financial year 2022. The company competes with 1mg, Apollo247, and eVital among other companies in this segment.

Online Pharmacy Market 

The revenue in the online pharmacy segment is projected to reach $31.64 billion (Rs 2.62 lakh crore) in 2023. Furthermore, the revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2023-2027) of 13.40 per cent, resulting in a projected market volume of $52.33 billion (Rs 4.34 lakh crore) by 2027.

Meanwhile, the user penetration will be 21.65 per cent in 2023 and is expected to hit 29.04 per cent by 2027, according to Statista. The average revenue per user (ARPU) is expected to amount to $19.03 (Rs 1,574.55).

However, in global comparison, most revenue will be generated in China, which will be $8,447 million (Rs 70,110 crore) in 2023.