Owing to the large population, the healthcare industry across the country has a major impact on the national economy. While pharmaceutical shops and suppliers across metro cities have the access to most of the medicines, the local medical shops in the non-metro cities have serious availability issues in terms of medicines due to a huge gap in the supply chain.

To strengthen the pharmaceutical product supply in the non-metro-based local medical shops as well as to establish a single value chain between pharma companies, stockists, and medical shops, Aastha Dusad, along with her two other businesses partners, co-founded MEDdelivery in 2019. Over time, the firm has turned out to be a gamechanger for local medical shops by making sourcing faster as well as easier for them. Initially started only in Jaipur, the firm has expanded to Various cities in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, & Uttar Pradesh, and is planning to expand multifold throughout the country in the next 1-2 years.

In an exclusive interview with Women Entrepreneur, Aastha has shared the foundation journey of the firm, her vision as well as future roadmaps planned for the firm’s growth, and much more.

Give us a brief introduction to MEDdelivery. Shed some light on your early educational journey & the prior industry experience that you bring to the table.

MEDdelivery is a B2B platform for medical shopkeepers where they can buy absolutely everything that they can get from the hyperlocal wholesale market. We are neither stockists nor retailers, and don’t even participate in supply chain margin. As a tech platform, we make it seamless for the medical shopkeepers to order based on their requirements.

After completing my schooling at India International School, Jaipur, I did both my graduation as well as PG Diploma in Economics, and then also my Masters in Economics. I have over seven years of experience in B2B sales, customer acquisition, and client retention. Before the firm, I was mainly working in our family business in the B2B space. Except for me, there are also two other co-founders, belonging to the tech, finance, & pharma backgrounds.

What motivated you to establish MEDdelivery? Tell us about the underlying idea behind the company & its most unique features.

In 2017, I along with my other two Co-Founders Rohit and Rahul set out with a vision to help the local pharma retailers increase their business through fast & effective B2C deliveries, within one hour of the order being placed. However, very soon we realized that a deeper issue prevailed which was the lack of on-time procurement from local suppliers due to the fragmented supply chain at the hyperlocal level. Hence, in April of 2019, all three of us set out to change the way traditional procurement and supply worked. For the next eight months, despite many negative sentiments towards our younger and fast-paced style and way of functioning, we took retailers' orders, procured them from the local market, aggregated them in our car, and personally delivered it as per time slots to retailers.

This not only helped us understand the way hyperlocal markets functioned and their nuances but also earned us appraise from hundreds of retailers across Jaipur. This is how MEDdelivery was born and today over 3000 retailers with 80 percent repeat users procure daily from over five lakh products on our platform with features like, live tracking of their orders, easy online sales & expiry returns from their hyper-local suppliers market.

What are the roles & responsibilities that you shoulder as the co-founder of the firm? What are some of the major milestones that you have achieved throughout your professional journey?

As the CEO and Co-Founder, my responsibilities include managing the entire organization along with raising investment for the firm. I am tasked with the entire organization’s growth & business development. I’m proud to be part of the team that works tireleslly with empathy towards our healthcare providers and COVID heroes.

"Around 70 percent of the Battle is won in your mind, Believe in yourself, if you Think you can do it then There’s nothing that can Stop you and the rest will be History"

Apart from cities like Jaipur, we are also present in 20+ Tier-IV towns. Successful execution of such a business model in the case of non-metro cities can be difficult due to the impenetrable healthcare and pharmaceutical facilities. To be able to penetrate those areas, where we have been able to help the retailers procure their medicines effectively and increase their customer retention, along with a reduction in their blocked working capital due to just-in-time procurement is what we consider a huge milestone.

Going forward, what is your vision for MEDdelivery’s growth? Any advice for the young women & girls who also aspire to become business leaders and entrepreneurs in the future?

Starting from scratch to now dealing with over 5600 pharmaceutical brands, our overall journey has been spectacular. In terms of future roadmap, our vision is to make the platform accessible in Tier-II, III, and IV cities & towns throughout the country, that are currently not able to service their patients well due to information assymentry in supply chain and lower penetration of the brands across the regions.

The advice I would like to give to young women and budding entrepreneurs is to believe themselves that they can achieve whatever they want. It’s all in your mind. All the shackles that you think are stopping you is because you think they are stopping you and nothing in real is stopping you. 90 percent of the battle is won in your mind, and then there’s nothing that can stop you from achieving your goals. You have to take your own decisions and act on them as no one will help you, unless you help yourself.

Aastha Dusad, Co-Founder, Meddelivery

After her Master’s in Economics, Aastha joined her family business & headed B2B sales before cofounding the Pharma focused B2B platform MEDdelivery, and is presently taking care of the firm’s growth, investment, as well as business development. A hardworking individual, Aastha has an overall experience of seven years in B2B sales, customer acquisition, as well as in client retention.

• Awards of Recognitions Won:

Awarded as the Best Startup by the Govt. of Rajasthan with prize money of Rs.20 Lakhs, and recognized as a Startup Building for Bharat by Yourstory in a featured article.