This healthcare supply chain start-up aims to treble its reach this year

Biddano, a healthcare supply chain platform, plans to expand its reach to 52 cities by year-end, trebling its reach from the current 15 cities as an increasing number of pharmacies are looking to become organised and adopt online technology to solve last-mile distribution issues. 

The start-up, which helps chemists procure medicines quickly, onboarded over 100 Super-Stockists and 50,000 pharmacies during the last calendar year, crossing gross merchandise value of $100 million so far.  

Founded in 2016 by Talha Shaikh and Ashok Yadav, Biddano pivoted to the business-to-business model two years later. The company now connects local super-stockists with pharmacies/hospitals/labs and fulfills orders in under three hours. 

"During the pandemic, the major challenge that many pharmacists faced was the unavailability of products and unreliability in deliveries. Because of Biddano, they could entirely rely on timely fulfilments. We impact the healthcare supply chain through our main products, Bkart and Shortbuk," said Co-founder & CEO Shaikh. 

Bkart, a tech-enabled healthcare logistics platform, consolidates and reduces delivery turnaround time from 24 hours to under three hours. Shortbuk is a new age comprehensive daily procurement platform for fast-moving consumer goods and over-the-counter products. 

The start-up uses a plug-and-expand model to help stockists manage their demand and supply while expanding their geographical reach. It has also partnered with non-banking finance companies or NBFCs to provide a credit line to the pharmacies.  

"Pharmacies have been at the forefront of the pandemic. Biddano’s vision is to empower and impact every stakeholder in the healthcare supply chain, with a razor-sharp focus on providing advanced tech systems and delivery infrastructure, which is the need of the hour," said Shaikh while highlighting the fact that sales return percentage has drastically declined from 11 per cent to just 2 per cent. 

In September 2021, the Pune-based firm raised $2 million from Gokul Rajaram, board member at Coinbase, Pinterest, JPIN Venture Catalysts UK, and Livspace founder Ramakant Sharma and also from existing investors Venture Catalysts and Firstcheque. 

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