Consolidation in the e-pharmacy space and the Reliance Industries game plan

The Netmeds acquisition will help it enter online drug sales, making it an integrated player. The firm has a ready customer base of 400 mn mobile users whom it could tap for its online health services

The online pharmacy sector is going through major consolidation. On Tuesday night, Reliance Industries (through Reliance Retail), which has identified this sector as one of the three key areas of growth (apart from agritech and edutech), bought over Netmeds. And in another development, PharmaEasy decided to merge with Medlife to create an entity valued at $1.2 billion, according to analysts.

According to Frost and Sullivan, the e-pharmacy market in India, which was worth about $512 million in 2018, is growing at a CAGR of 63 per cent and is expected to hit overall revenues of over $3.6 billion by 2022.