India’s 1mg gets $16M to make India’s health industry more transparent

1mg app

India’s 1mg is getting ready to change local pharmaceutical market with a mobile app/service that helps users save money on their drug purchases. To that end, the company has raised $16 million Series B led by Maverick Capital Ventures, with participation from returning investors Sequoia India and Omidiyar Network.

1mg offers two main services: an online pharmacy that makes it easy for users to find a lower-cost drug, and a platform for finding medical labs. For the first part of the business, the company is only working with pharmacies that are required to make sure batch information about all medications they dispense are traceable. Labs for its online diagnostics services are also audited.

The new funds will be used to build more analytic tools, expand to 30 Indian cities by the end of 2017, and enter new online health verticals. 1mg’s plan is to grow its revenue at 20 to 30 percent month-over-month “for the foreseeable future,” with the goal of becoming India’s largest online pharmacy and diagnostics platform.

Founded in 2012 as a drug information app called HealthKartPlus, 1mg spun out from its parent company, Bright Lifecare, last year and changed its name after raising about $5.5 million in its first funding round. 1mg now has more than 5 million app downloads, and 2 million monthly unique visitors who view a total of 25 million pages every month.

The Indian healthcare market is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16 percent to $280 billion by 2020, according to FiCCI-KPMG.

[Via: TechCrunch]