(NewsVoir); Aggressively moving towards its expansion plans, 1mg.com - India’s leading m-health platform that has also been operating the largest e-Pharmacy marketplace in the country, announced today that it has decided to expand the scope of its platform and is entering the alternate medicine space (AYUSH categories) through the acquisition of www. Homeobuy.com. Homeobuy is a web platform for homeopathy medicines. With this acquisition, 1mg will re-brand the website to www. 1mgAyush.com and make Homeopathic & Ayurvedic medicines available to customers in New Delhi.
Apart from China, India uses largest number of medicinal plants and the traditional form has seen a rise in sales in last ten years. Being the leading online marketplace of prescription medicines, 1mg has the potential to aggressively tap this new market. The Indian government has also been actively supporting and developing the AYUSH categories, as a strong system of medicine that has evolved over a long period of time.
Talking about the new initiative, Mr. Prashant Tandon, Founder 1mg said “We are the platform that stands for consumer health and we believe the alternate forms of medicines are equally important. Having seen the importance of these alternative forms of medicines and our government’s support in promoting them, we aim at creating an exhaustive platform for all health solutions. The business will continue to work on a marketplace network model and partner with quality vendors in this sector”
The traditional systems of medicines are known to be effective for lifestyle disorders, mental disorder, skin ailments, and cough, cold, allergy and geriatric cases. Due to fewer side-effects and safe nature of these medicines, there is a rise in demands among the well informed consumers and the company wants to complement these growing demands through a sophisticated platform that provides the right information and access to quality brands in this space.
Speaking about the acquisition Mr. Tandon says “Vivek Singh has built a quality platform for homeopathic medicines and has developed deep domain skills for this sector. We are glad Vivek has joined the 1mg team to help drive these categories and together we intend to create India’s largest destination for alternate medicine as well” says Mr. Tandon.
Vivek Singh, ex- Ranbaxy executive, launched Homeobuy.com recently with his own finances and later got funded by an angel investor Amit Sodhi. Excited about this acquisition, Mr. Singh says “I wanted to promote and raise awareness about AYUSH medicines among the customers and 1mg.com being the market leader in e-health has the potential to grow my idea to India’s largest alternate medicine business.” said Mr. Vivek Singh.
Homeobuy.com has the largest selection of Imported and Indian homeopathic and biochemic medicines with detailed description of indications, active ingredients, mode of action and recommended dosage and more. It comprises thousands of SKUs in its product portfolio, letting users find a wide range of homeopathic medicines while it also provides free online consultation through qualified and expert homeopathic doctors.
With Government’s emphasis on mainstreaming AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy) and declaration of Rs 33,152 crore to the traditional methods of medicines, it is quite evident that government’s mission AYUSH has growth potential.
The “alternate medicine” space is expected to grow rapidly. Homeopathy is today a 3000 Cr industry growing at 30% and is expected to cross 5500 Cr by 2017, as per an ASSOCHAM report. The country presently has 10 crore homeopathy consumer, expected to cross 16cr by 2017, according to the report.
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