Jab shortage forces health startups to defer plans to vaccinate India Inc

Enterprises like 1mg, PharmEasy and Practo had drawn up initiatives to inoculate over a million employees from some of the country's top companies

As the government’s vaccination drive falters for lack of vaccines, the efforts of healthcare start-ups such as 1mg, Practo and PharmEasy to vaccinate millions of corporate employees have also been delayed for the same reason.   

Hyderabad-based healthcare start-up ekincare has partnered with 1mg to facilitate Covid-19 vaccination for the employees of corporates such as Oyo, Flipkart, Swiggy, BlackRock, Micron and KPMG.

1mg co-founder & CEO Prashant Tandon said the company has set up the network at the back end and the administration capacity – a network of some 2,500 administrators - so that they can vaccinate people at scale.

“Most of the manufacturers are constrained with pre-orders. It could take three to four weeks for the vaccination programme to begin. The only thing stopping us getting started is the access to vaccines,” said Tandon. 

The company is in talks with all vaccine makers, including international suppliers, for stock. “In every city we will not have ready infrastructure so we are looking at $1.5-2 million investments for additional infrastructure,” said Tandon.  

Kiran Kalakuntla, founder and CEO at ekincare, said he needs a million doses for the clients that ekincare manages. “One in two corporates are looking to sponsor vaccines for their employees and dependants. We will be managing the demand side of the vaccination while 1mg will be taking care of the supply side and on ground inoculation,” he said.  Currently over 500 corporates are in the pipeline for this, he added.

Mumbai-based PharmEasy has said that it aims to vaccinate over 30 million people within the next few quarters via camps and vaccine centres, leveraging its presence across India with over 80,000 partner retailers, 5,000 doctors and a state-of-the-art pharma supply chain facility enabling last-mile delivery of cold chain products.

“Our vaccination drive aims to provide ease of access to vaccination which can help us to achieve herd immunity at the earliest. Amidst the rising Covid-19 cases in the second wave, we wanted to contribute our bit in breaking the chain by setting up vaccination camps and centres to facilitate this,” Dharmil Sheth, co-founder, PharmEasy, has said earlier.

But these intentions are being thwarted by the vaccine shortage. PharmEasy declined to comment but a person familiar with the matter said: “PharmEasy might get the vaccine stocks by the fourth week of May which will be essentially for large-sized corporates and group housing societies.”

Sequoia India backed healthcare start-up Practo is also aiming to vaccinate over 10 million Indians. It has announced ‘Corporate Suraksha’, a vaccination programme for companies across the country.

Practo said over 500 corporates have expressed an interest in joining the programme in the first phase. “Right now, we are accessing the demand for the vaccines,” said a company spokesperson.

Practo will be setting up camps and working with its strong network of hospitals, vaccinators, and supply chain companies to get the drive going. In the coming weeks, its vaccination programmes will be run at hospitals while special camps will be set up at corporate offices in over 30 cities.