Online marketplace for medicines HealthKartPlus rebrands as 1MG, raises $6M

Gurgaon-based Bright Lifecare Pvt Ltd has rebranded its online medicine store HealthKartPlus to 1MG and spun it off into a separate company 1MG Technologies Pvt. Ltd. The new firm has separately raised $6 million (Rs 32 crore) from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Kae Capital, Intel Capital, Omidyar Network and MakeMyTrip founder Deep Kalra, as per a report in Mint citing a top company executive.

The funds from this round of investment will be used for scaling up its business and expanding its operations to other cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Chandigarh by end of this year, it said.

HealthKart, run jointly by Aquamarine Healthcare Pvt Ltd and Bright Lifecare, was founded by Prashant Tandon and Sameer Maheshwari in 2011 selling products in a broad range of categories such as fitness and  nutrition supplements, sports nutrition, health devices, personal care, eye-care and parenting. The online health products store began its operations in Delhi-NCR, but later expanded its services to Bangalore and Bhubaneswar.

A year later it had launched HealthKartPlus.

The company had raised over $19 million across three rounds during 2011-13, according to VCCEdge, the data research platform of VCCircle.

The Mint report added that with the corporate restructuring, the direct management of the two firms has also been divided.1MG will be led by Tandon while Maheshwari will continue to head HealthKart.com.

The newspaper report said HealthKart.com is looking to raise $20 million in six months. This side of the business will focus on fitness and nutrition and will exit other categories such as beauty, personal care, baby care and eye care. It also plans to venture into the fitness services market, offering gym memberships and services of gym trainers and yoga trainers.

Meanwhile, 1MG claims it has a database of about 100,000 medicines with detailed information including their side effects, interactions and composition. It offers price comparison where users can find generic drug equivalents for commonly prescribed branded drugs.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)