Online drug business thriving

Ashraf Ali, a NGO worker in Cox’s Bazar, is to take care of his sick parents left back at home at Savar, an outskirt of the capital.

Ashraf’s 72-year-old father suffered a brain stroke three years ago and mother has been suffering from some chronic complications. Both need regular medications.

Ashraf is looking after his ill parents thanks to online portal and Apps providing multiple services like reaching rare medicines and medical devices at people’s doorsteps.

“I’m the sole child of my parents; no one is there to take care of them at home, to bring them medicine too, thanks to digital platforms. I can buy medicine for them and the agents of the e-pharmacy take medicines to them,” Ashraf said.

Like Ashraf, many people have now moved away from medicine purchase from local drug stores to the online platforms as 16-17 e-pharmacies have come up with their services in the country.

Industry insiders say, the pandemic-time social distancing and health concerns pushed up online medicine business in the country and it is growing with time.

“Online medicine sales went to its pick in 2020 during the pandemic. Afterwards it fell in the middle of 2021 and now in 2022 it is growing gradually and people are being habituated,” said Sahab Uddin Shipon, the founder of the pioneering online medicine shop Diabetes Store.

“In 2016, we initially focused on diabetic products but now we have included every possible healthcare product and medical device. Both Over-The-Counter (OTC) medicine and prescribed medicine are making sales,” he said.

He said, “Ours is a licensed pharmacy. We collect medicines directly from the manufacturing companies and supply medicines to all over the country including Dhaka from our single inventory at Banani,” said Shahab.

Shahab is also the Vice-President of the e-Commerce Association of Bangladesh (e-CAB).

So far only 6-7 online pharmacies got their licenses to run their online medicine business, the e-CAB Vice-President said.

“We take 2-3 hours inside Dhaka for emergency delivery. We deliver products within 30 minutes to nearby areas of our inventory and outside Dhaka customers get their purchases within 24-72 hours. We take MFS, credit/debit card or cash on delivery.”

He said they don’t use third party pharmacies for delivery as around 16 per cent medicines are reported to be fakes and sub-standard.

Md Majharul Islam Rajib, one of the owners of Oshud.com, said they started their online medicine business in 2015 beside an offline outlet medicine shop.

They are doing online business with all kinds of documents for the medicine business like trade, VAT and drug licenses.

Customers give their prescription through whatsApp or facebook inbox or they write the names of medicines and quantity and then they provide medicines within 24 hours with a delivery charge, he said.

Rajib said currently they cannot make high-profit from medicine businesses. They are doing business on a commission basis.

They get the highest 12 per cent to 13 per cent commission from different medicine companies and in many cases the commissions is less than that, he said adding that they also offer discounts of around 5 per cent to 7 per cent to customers.

“We have a monthly sale of, on average, TK 5, 00,000, he said. Around 10 to 15 organizations are doing online medicine business.”

Hussain Mohammad Fahad, the CEO okf Aroggo.com, said they started it in December 2021.

Now their sales are increasing day by day. The app has a 4.9 rating due to quality services while both its business and services are being expanded. “Our company’s growth rate is 20 per cent to 25 per cent per month.”

Dain Manzur, Online In-Charge (Marketing) of one of the largest drug stores Lazz Pharma, said “We are currently getting good response from our online venture.”

Online sale of Lazz Pharma now covers around 11-12 per cent of its total sale, he said, their customers are equally present in both rural and city areas.

It sold medicines worth Tk5-6 lakh in 2020, Tk6-7 in 2021 and now Tk7-8 lakh. But, to him, it is not the amount of sale but the number of customers that matters to create value in the market.

“We sell medicines of Tk7-7.5 lakh on an average monthly. It is good in amount but not good in terms of the number of customers.”

People only search the medicines online when they fail to get those medicines at offline shops, he expressed his disappointment.

He said they are not being able to supply products at satisfactory level as the products searched by customers are mostly Indian, which are tough to import and sale of them is illegal.

However, currently the customer base is increasing as ‘we are doing facebook marketing’, he said.

According to the world’s largest market research store ‘Research and Markets based at Dublin in Ireland, the Global Online Pharmacy Market was estimated to be valued at $70.1 billion in 2021.

The growth rate of the Global Online Pharmacy Market is 17.3 per cent, with an estimated value of $182.2 billion by 2027.

The Global Online Pharmacy Market is estimated to be worth $182.2 billion by 2027.