1mg Technologies raises Rs100 crore in Series B funding
1 min read 20 Apr 2016, 01:51 AM ISTFresh funds will be deployed to expand online pharmacy and diagnostics verticals, and to launch digital health products
Premium
Bengaluru: Healthcare start-up 1mg Technologies Pvt. Ltd has raised Rs.100 crore in a Series B funding round from Maverick Capital Ventures, the venture capital arm of US-based hedge fund Maverick Capital, besides existing investors Sequoia Capital and Omidyar Network, the company said in a statement.
1mg had earlier raised $6 million from Sequoia Capital, Intel Capital, Omidyar Network and Deep Kalra, co-founder of travel portal MakeMyTrip, in April last year.
The fresh funds will be deployed to expand the online pharmacy and diagnostics verticals as well launch digital health products such as smart prescriptions and personalised health feeds for consumers, the company said.
“India has one of the highest populations of chronic patients in the world and yet access to quality and affordable healthcare is limited," said Prashant Tandon, co-founder and chief executive at 1mg.
“Our app allows customers to access knowledge about substitutes that can often save 80-90% on healthcare bills. Additionally our e-pharmacy platform enables users to transact and purchase these medicines and have them home-delivered. Our more recently launched e-diagnostics service aims to bring a similar transparency to the lab tests market," he added.
1mg was earlier called HealthkartPlus, the generic drug search business of Healthkart, an online vendor of health products run by Bright Lifecare Pvt. Ltd. In April last year, HealthkartPlus was spun off into a separate entity and rebranded 1mg.
While Tandon, one of the founders of Healthkart, took charge at 1mg, co-founder Sameer Maheshwari continues to head Healthkart.
Tandon said revenue of 1mg grew about eight times in the last 12 months.
The company operates an online marketplace for medicines, besides facilitating doctor appointments and diagnostic test booking.
According to its website, 1mg has a database of about 100,000 medicines with detailed information on their side effects and composition. It also allows consumers to do a price comparison among multiple brands of medicines with the same composition.
This is Maverick’s first investment in the Indian healthcare space. The venture capital firm has invested in a number of healthcare start-ups globally, including California-based Collective Health and San Fransisco-headquartered Castlight Health.
The latest tranche of funding will help 1mg to fend off competition from rivals including Sequoia Capital-backed Practo Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which is also the best funded homegrown healthcare start-up, having raised $124 million from investors such as Tencent, Sofina, Google Capital and Altimeter Capital.
