Can Medicines Reach You as Fast as Groceries? DocPharma Says Yes.

India has mastered speed in everyday essentials—groceries arrive in 10 minutes, meals in under 30. Yet, when it comes to essential medicines, delays of two to three days are still the norm.

For patients, that wait isn’t just inconvenient, it can be risky too. For insurers, e‑pharmacies, and healthcare platforms, it means lost conversions and low utilisation of services that were meant to improve access.

This very inefficiency in India’s pharmacy delivery system led to the creation of DocPharma, a quick-commerce healthcare infrastructure startup offering 30-minute prescription medicine deliveries through a unique B2B2C model.

Founded in early 2023 by Shashank Rai and Saquib Ali, and joined by Sagar Chauhan in 2025, DocPharma is not just another e-pharmacy. It positions itself as the “AWS of medicine delivery,” serving as the invisible backend for e-pharmacies, healthcare platforms, insurers, and hospitals across India.

Operating in more than 12 cities—including Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Mumbai, Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Kolkata, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Patna—the startup enables its B2B partners to fulfil prescription medicine orders within 30-60 minutes, a turnaround that has significantly boosted online medicine purchases, increased insurance utilisation, and eliminated delays that historically plagued the system.

Recently, DocPharma further raised the bar by launching 30-minute medicine delivery services across Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, reinforcing its commitment to faster, more reliable healthcare access in India’s busiest metros.

From Lockdown Deliveries to a Disruptive Startup

Shashank Rai, an ISM/IIT Dhanbad and IIM Calcutta alumnus with 13+ years of supply chain expertise, including leadership stints at Flipkart, Shadowfax, Udaan, and Tata Steel-first crossed paths with Saquib Ali at Udaan.

Saquib, a seasoned entrepreneur, engineering graduate, and former golf player, brought over 13 years of experience in scaling businesses, having founded two startups and held leadership roles at MediBuddy, Toppr, and Udaan.

At Udaan, Shashank led operations across Uttar Pradesh. Saquib helmed business development for the region. What began as a professional collaboration soon laid the groundwork for a shared vision that would one day become DocPharma.

Post Udaan, Shashank joined Flipkart and Saquib moved to Medibuddy, before both relocated to Bengaluru and launched DocPharma.

The launch of DocPharma wasn’t written in a business plan or pitch deck, they began during the chaos of India’s first COVID-19 lockdown. Trapped in an apartment complex of 1,500 flats, Shashank Rai and Saquib Ali noticed a troubling pattern. Residents had no reliable access to medicines.

“We tied up with a couple of pharmacy stores where we did a pro bono delivery of medicines,” Shashank recalls.

Orders came through WhatsApp. The duo personally handled logistics. What started as an act of necessity turned into a live test of demand. 

“From just those 1,500 flats, we generated around Rs 5 lakh in monthly business,” Saquib says.

“This was all self-funded, and purely designed to help people. But the insight was clear, medicine delivery wasn’t just broken; it was decades behind in infrastructure.”

The arrival of Sagar Chauhan as Founder and CPTO at DocPharma reads like a startup fairytale. In the early days of 2025, Shashank and Saquib were battling tech delays from an outsourced team of old friends and colleagues, slowing down their vision. Then came an unexpected LinkedIn message. “I had posted about building DocPharma when Sagar, my junior from ISM/IIT Dhanbad, pinged, asking if I needed any help,” recalls Shashank.

What seemed like chance quickly turned crucial. With eight years as a CTO, having built and scaled multiple ventures from scratch like Pidge, SaveIN, DigiChal, Samsung and PayU. Sagar was more than a well-wisher. Despite his packed schedule, he hopped on a late-night journey from Delhi to Bengaluru.

“We spoke through the night,” says Saquib. “His clarity, depth, and approach to our challenges left no doubt, if we wanted to build a tech backbone capable of propelling DocPharma’s growth, we needed him.”

One message, one meeting, and the future of DocPharma’s tech was rewritten.

The Critical Delivery Gap in India’s Pharmacy Market

India's existing online pharmacy models often take 2-3 days to deliver complete prescription orders. This delay becomes a critical issue for acute demands such as pain relief, post-operative medicines, or emergency prescriptions. Patients often end up visiting an average of 1.7 pharmacies per prescription.

As a result, consumer trust in digital-first platforms erodes, and a significant opportunity for e-pharmacies, health insurers and healthcare platforms is lost.

Additionally, insurance OPD (Outpatient Department) services see extremely low utilisation rates. As per DocPharma’s internal data, only 4% of insured patients use their benefits for medicines. The rest pay out-of-pocket and later deal with tedious reimbursement processes.

Inside DocPharma’s 30-Minute Engine

While others built apps, DocPharma built infrastructure. The company bet on a robust, integrated supply chain, operating through a hybrid model that combines partnerships with local pharmacies and a growing network of dark stores to optimise last-mile delivery.

Once an order is placed through a partner platform (such as an e-pharmacy, health insurer, healthcare provider, or D2C health&wellness brand), DocPharma’s rule engine identifies the customer’s location and dispatches a rider to the store with the most complete stock.

This model ensures not just speed but reliability. In fact, 80%+ of orders are delivered in under 60 minutes, and the startup operates with an extremely low bounce rate across over 100,000 SKUs.

"Our technology is built with privacy at its core. Customer details are never shared with stores-instead, our system seamlessly manages notifications and the entire fulfilment workflow in the background,” explains Sagar.

“This frictionless process eliminates delays and miscommunication that often slow down deliveries. And with no customer-facing platform, we guarantee complete customer ownership to our partners. No poaching, no risks, your customers stay exclusively yours on our secure platform, so you can focus on growing relationships, not guarding them.”

The Advantage of the B2B2C Model

The intricacies of India's pharmaceutical market (750K+ SKUs from 3K+ manufacturers) demand innovative supply chain solutions for healthcare platforms to achieve sustainable profitability in a typically low gross margin category.

Docpharma's B2B2C model tackles this head on by strategically aggregating demand across a diverse ecosystem: e-pharmacies, health insurers, D2C wellness brands, and direct flows from doctors and hospitals. This unified demand stream is the engine driving significant cost savings and margin enhancement.

How Aggregation-led Approach Delivers Tangible Economic Benefits

Volume Driven Cost Efficiency: In a low-margin sector like pharmacy, volume is king. By consolidating demand from multiple platforms, Docpharma achieves substantial economies of scale in procurement, warehousing, and logistics. This bulk processing translates directly into lower per unit operational costs, a crucial advantage in maximising profitability.

Empowering Partnered Pharmacies: DocPharma’s blended model, integrating strategically located Dark Stores with an extensive network of partnered retail pharmacies, isn't just about reach.

Docpharma contributes an average of 30-40% to the overall sales of our partnered retail pharmacies. This significant volume injection transforms their economics, making the partnership mutually beneficial and strengthening our fulfilment network.

Boosting Cashless Conversions & Reducing Claim Costs: The startup’s impact on health insurers speaks volumes. By streamlining the medicine fulfilment process, the startup has driven cashless conversions from 3.8% to over 8.9% in the last two years.

This efficiency directly translates to an estimated 8% reduction in claim processing operational costs for medicine reimbursements, real savings driven by aggregated order flow.

Fueling Platform Customer Loyalty: The reliability and speed of our 30-minute delivery, powered by aggregated demand enabling optimal inventory placement, significantly enhance customer experience on our partner platforms. This is reflected in the impressive increase in repeat order frequency from 4-5 orders per year to 9-11 orders per year, directly boosting customer lifetime value.

“The Docpharma difference? We understand that in a low-margin environment, profitability is fueled by consistent, high-volume order aggregation. Our model isn't just about moving medicines; it's about creating a powerful, demand-driven supply chain that unlocks sustainable unit economics for healthcare platforms and strengthens the entire ecosystem,“ Shashank explains.

“We flipped the model by focusing on being the best at fulfilment while letting our partners handle customer acquisition,” Saquib explains.

DocPharma’s Journey Through a $130 Billion Opportunity

The startup’s monthly GMV has grown rapidly, marking an approximate 462% increase in FY25 compared to FY24. It further anticipates a 56% to 87% rise in its monthly run rate by the end of the current fiscal.

According to the Economic Survey 2022‑23 (and reaffirmed in 2023‑24), India’s domestic pharmaceutical market is expected to reach USD 130 billion by 2030, growing from approximately USD 41 billion in 2021 and around USD 50 billion in 2023-24. DocPharma sits at the intersection of this growth and the 4x expansion of OPD insurance since the pandemic.

With over 70% of India’s population living in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities and 99% of pharmacy transactions still offline, the opportunity is immense. DocPharma is unlocking this by tapping into underpenetrated markets using its hybrid store model and B2B integrations.

What’s Next?

To fund its next stage of growth, DocPharma is raising a Pre-Series A funding round. Once raised, the startup plans to allocate the funds towards expanding pharmacy partners and dark store expansion across 43+ cities, with a focus on Tier 2 and 3 India.

Additionally, it will focus on building B2B relationships with e-pharmacies, health insurers, D2C health&wellness brands, healthtech platforms and healthcare providers.

Not the Face, But the Foundation: DocPharma’s Infrastructure Play for India’s Healthcare Future

As India’s healthcare system undergoes a digital transformation, platforms are being built to connect patients to doctors, diagnostics, and now even OPD insurance. But none of that matters if a patient can’t get their prescribed medicines quickly, reliably, and affordably.

That’s where DocPharma steps in with deep infrastructure that makes the system work better for everyone else.

“We are doing two things for that,” Shashank explains. “First, our supply chain is our product. We are building the supply chain for these backend players. Second, we are empowering local pharmacies rather than replacing them.”

The startup's model leverages an extensive network of local pharmacies, a growing digital healthcare user base, and an insurance market poised to expand rapidly. By working behind the scenes, it aims to ensure that this new system doesn't break at the point of delivery.

“We expect that by 2030, probably one out of every five people in India will have OPD insurance. If that trend continues, the focus will shift from visibility and branding to infrastructure reliability-an area DocPharma is quietly building its strength in,” Saquib added.