With over 400 million persistent sufferers, India is likely one of the global’s greatest medication markets. However whilst maximum e-pharmacies chase pace, affordability stays the actual problem. Truemeds took a special course: serving to sufferers transfer to lower-cost substitutes, a raffle now paying off with new investment at about 4 occasions its earlier valuation.
The six-year-old startup has raised $85 million in a brand new spherical that incorporates $65 million in number one and $20 million in secondary investment led by way of Accel, in conjunction with participation from Top XV Companions. TechCrunch first reported on Accel’s talks to again Truemeds final yr. Present traders WestBridge Capital and InfoEdge Ventures, additionally participated.
The recent spherical has boosted Truemeds’ valuation to over $400 million, up from the $110 million in its final spherical two years in the past.
Based in 2019, Truemeds entered the marketplace at a time when India’s on-line pharmacy house was once already crowded with main avid gamers providing steep reductions on branded generics. However a few of the ones firms struggled to maintain early momentum — Prosus Ventures-backed PharmEasy, for example, noticed its valuation drop from a top of $5.6 billion to below $600 million, whilst 1mg was once received by way of Tata Virtual, a part of the Tata Workforce. As a substitute of competing head-on, Truemeds’ founders selected to concentrate on a quite area of interest phase: generic medications.
“There is not any solution to train the consumer that you’ll have extra inexpensive choices if you’ll’t have enough money those medication,” mentioned Truemeds co-founder Akshat Nayyar (pictured above, left) in an interview. “This is the place we felt that no one within the price chain was once running in opposition to that, and we will bridge that hole.”
The Mumbai-based recommends generic possible choices to shoppers for the branded medications they want. This sooner or later is helping shoppers get monetary savings, as generic medication are generally extra inexpensive than their branded variations because of charge efficiencies of their construction procedure.
Truemeds says its differentiated method has paid off, with earnings rising over 66% year-over-year to ₹5 billion ($57 million) within the final monetary yr. The startup says it keeps greater than 15% of its earnings after 365 days and now serves a mean of 500,000 consumers each and every month, with a complete of three million consumers so far. Additionally, it says it now serves over 20,000 postal codes around the nation, with greater than 75% of its consumers coming from tier-2 towns and past.
Techcrunch match
San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025
On the other hand, instructing consumers about possible choices to their prescribed medications — and convincing them to modify from branded medication to generics — stays a problem.
“Since you get anchored for your prescribed logo’s value, and whilst you all of sudden see a cheaper price, you need to understand why it’s low,” Nayyar advised TechCrunch.
Expanding reductions whilst competition scale back
Whilst these days’s e-pharmacies chase pace over financial savings, the sphere’s early playbook was once other. On-line pharmacies in India used to supply reductions of as much as 25% to draw consumers. On the other hand, Nayyar mentioned this dropped to twenty% after which 15% — the brand new moderate — as maximum burned money to procure new consumers and pivoted to sooner supply as their primary differentiator.
In the meantime, Truemeds has long past in the wrong way, expanding its moderate reductions from 29% to 32% within the final 365 days. For a mean consumer who switches manufacturers at the platform, financial savings achieve 47% on their medication, says the corporate.
This comes from Truemeds’ deep procurement relationships with pharma firms, the place the startup makes use of its era to present producers higher call for visibility, serving to them plan manufacturing extra successfully for upcoming quarters, he mentioned.
The startup additionally is predicated by itself logistics in one of the most main towns it operates in and makes use of cheap logistics companions for the remainder.
“We consider that our four-hour supply fashion is greater than enough from a protracted affected person’s point of view,” mentioned Nayyar. “You’re in a position to do extra deliberate purchases that method, however we need to do it in the most productive way, and cross increasingly reductions to the tip consumer quite than [focus on] the quickest supply for that topic.”
Subsequent up: AI-powered customization and doorstep diagnostics
As Truemeds must persuade consumers to make a choice generics over branded medications, it is going via deeper consultations with them. It already conducts 10-12 million consultations consistent with yr. The startup has advanced an set of rules over time that appears at quite a lot of parameters to exactly recommend possible choices to the branded medication a buyer calls for. It considers nuances akin to whether or not the drugs is sugar-coated whether it is for a tender affected person, the place it’s manufactured, and whether or not the plant is GMP-certified, amongst others. The startup additionally has a chatbot to handle some consumer queries temporarily.
A lot more is at the roadmap. The corporate plans to broaden an AI-based gadget that customizes conversations in line with consumers’ conduct and former interactions with generic possible choices. It’s additionally opening a Bengaluru place of work whilst dedicating a minimum of 20% of its capital to engineering and product construction.
Past medications, Truemeds is plotting to go into diagnostics via partnerships with nationwide pathology labs, making plans to pilot lab trying out services and products in some tier-2 towns within the subsequent 3 to 4 months.
“The main challenge stays the similar, which is making healthcare inexpensive for the tip consumer,” the co-founder mentioned. “It began with medications. Now that the fashion is getting established, we’re going to stay scaling that. Concurrently, we additionally need to see if we will do one thing equivalent at the diagnostics entrance, the place we will be the bottom charge supplier of a minimum of the most typical checks.”
The startup additionally plans to extend its success middle rely by way of 300% — from 19 recently — over the following 365 days, aiming to deepen its presence in current markets.
Prior to this spherical, Truemeds raised $50 million and nonetheless has 30–35% of that capital within the financial institution, Nayyar mentioned.
The startup has a group of workers of two,800 folks, with 250 founded in its Mumbai place of work.
