This WhatsApp-like App Promises the Fastest Medicine Delivery at Best Prices Founded in March 2015 by engineers Faizan Aziz and Anirudh Coontoor, the startup leverages technology and operations to deliver any medicine, instantly at the best prices.

Buying medicines online is without a shadow of doubt a hassle-free option when compared to the traditional means. The perks of online pharmacy are that you don't have to walk down to a medical store or wait in line for your medicines. It not only saves time but also ensures that you enjoy additional discounts on your order.

Bengaluru-based Myra is working on a similar model of delivering medicines in the smartest and fastest way. Founded in March 2015 by engineers Faizan Aziz and Anirudh Coontoor, the startup leverages technology and operations to deliver any medicine, instantly at the best prices.

BIZ Experiences India had a chat with Faizan Aziz to know how Myra is delivering medicine at the best price within 60 minutes of order placement.

Provide Easy Online Buying of Medicines:

Prior to founding Myra, Aziz was Chief Technology Officer at startup Dexetra (funded by Sequoia and Qualcomm ventures), which developed a Siri-like voice assistant app for Android called Iris. Coontoor was a senior software engineer at Nokia responsible for billing for Nokia live tools across India, China, Egypt, and Indonesia.

"In 2014, I was falling sick very regularly. One of the toughest things for me at that time was to keep in touch with the doctor. The whole process was so troubling.I shared my issue with Anirudh. He was facing a similar experience for his grandmother. His Grandma was suffering from chronic asthma and he had to buy medicines for her after every 15 days. We then observed that the availability of medicine is a serious issue. That's when we decided to launch Myra app. Our idea was to change the whole way of buying medicines. We want to make any medicine available to users instantly at best prices possible, "shared Aziz.

In-house Warehousing Benefit:

Aziz believes the problem with buying medicine from a medical store is that every medical shop follows an old-school technique.

"If the shop doesn't have a particular medicine, the shopkeeper will write it in a notebook. The experience is never going to change. In 1950's you had something like 100 stock-keeping units. One can't follow the same method now. We tried to work with the chemist shops but it didn't scale up. So, now we have our own warehouses where we store medicines purchased from the manufactures and distributors," he added.

Overcoming Challenges :

The distribution industry is fairly fragmented industry, especially in India. Currently, Myra deals with almost 80 distributors together. For Aziz one of the major challenges was to have so many stock-keeping units available at the time when the customer needs them.

"Another challenge was the delivery aspect where we are talking about 60 minutes delivery. Also, it's very difficult to have each and every medicine present in the warehouse. There are certain laws with the medicine which one needs to follow," said Aziz.

Buy Medicine at your Finger Tips:

Clearly, many startups struggle with producing enough demand for their service. But for Aziz, the promotion was never a problem.

"Personally if you were told that you will get medicines at the best prices instantly why would you not buy it. We do have people buying medicine for their own family.That's one option but also we have older people placing an order on our app and it's as simple as using Whatsapp. We also have a phone call based service," said Aziz

Talking about the future growth initiatives, Aziz shared that in 2018, he wants to expand Myra in cities like Delhi and Mumbai.

"Our current experience doesn't include live tracking of medicines. We believe a customer should know where the medicines are. The next important thing is periodic reminders. One of the common issues faced by people is that they buy medicines and forget to eat them. So reminding is one solution which we are working on next. Lastly, we want to add an express delivery option in our app. At present, our delivery time is 60 minutes but sooner we will allow customers to get the medicines in 30 minutes," he concluded