Consumer healthcare start-up 1mg has raised ₹100 crore in a Series B round led by Maverick Capital Ventures.

Existing investors Sequoia India and Omidyar Network also participated in the current round.

Started as HealhkartPlus, the pharmacy network and medicine search engine had raised $6 million from Deep Kalra, founder of MakeMyTrip, as well as Sequoia Capital, Omidyar Network, Intel Capital and Kae Capital last year, and was rebranded as 1mg.

The company helps consumers save 70-80 per cent of their medicine costs by allowing them to consider alternative brands for the same generic composition. The funding will be used to expand digital health offerings, increase nationwide coverage of its e-pharmacy and e-diagnostic services, launch digital health products such as ‘Smart Prescriptions’, and a personalised ‘My Health Feed’. 1mg has registered over 5 million app downloads and 2 million consumers, who use its services every month.

Limited access

Prashant Tandon, CEO and co-founder of 1mg, said, “India has one of the highest populations of chronic patients, and yet access to quality and affordable healthcare is limited.

Couple that with a generally poor understanding of one’s disease condition and lack of information, and that leads to patients often not being able to make the most cost-effective healthcare decisions.”

He added that 1mg’s core mission is to help consumers understand their healthcare choices better. “Our app allows customers to access knowledge about substitutes that can often save 80-90 per cent on healthcare bills.” He added, “Additionally, our e-pharmacy platform enables users to transact and purchase these medicines, and also have them home delivered. Our more recently launched e-diagnostics service aims to bring a similar transparency to the lab tests market, providing a complete solution for consumers’ most common healthcare needs.”

According to Matthew Kinsella, Managing Director, Maverick Capital Ventures, “Technology continues to transform the healthcare landscape and is empowering consumers to better manage their healthcare…1mg has a real shot at changing the healthcare landscape.”

Practo, which had raised $30 million from Sequoia India and Matrix Partners a few months ago, also raised $90 million in August last, making it the largest investment in the consumer healthtech space so far.

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