1mg hires former Zomato exec Tanmay Saksena as COO

Gurgaon-based online marketplace for medicines 1mg has appointed former Zomato executive Tanmay Saksena as chief operating officer, it said in a statement.

In February this year, Saksena quit as global business head of Zomato. During his one-year stint at Zomato, Saksena set up the online food ordering business for Zomato in India, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Manila. Online food ordering business contributed 5% of Zomato's revenues by January 2016, according to Saksena's LinkedIn profile.

Before joining Zomato, Saksena was in Silicon Valley for almost a decade where he worked with social gaming startup Playdom that was acquired by The Walt Disney Company in July 2010. At Walt Disney, he was vice president of Studio Operations at the Disney Interactive Media Group. He holds an MBA from Stanford University and a B Tech from IIT Kanpur.

"We are at a point from where we intend to accelerate our growth to create India's largest network of healthcare services. Tanmay's experience in building scalable consumer internet businesses at Zomato and Disney will be valuable in our journey ahead," said Prashant Tandon, founder and CEO, 1mg.

Two weeks ago, 1mg (previously known as HealthKartPlus) raised Rs 100 crore ($15 million) in a Series B funding round led by Maverick Capital Ventures, the venture capital arm of US-based hedge fund Maverick Capital. Existing investors Sequoia Capital and Omidyar Network also participated in the round. The fresh funds will be used to expand the online pharmacy and diagnostics verticals as well as launch digital health products and personalised health feeds for consumers.

"1mg plans to grow rapidly with the goal of becoming India's largest pharmacy and diagnostics platform. We believe that given the fragmentation of the industry, the largest platforms will be digital marketplaces as India leapfrogs brick-and-mortar based retail," said Saksena.

1mg, run by 1mg Technologies Pvt. Ltd, claims to have over 5 million organic app downloads and 25 million monthly page views coming from 2 million unique consumers who use its services every month.

It competes with Netmeds, Practo, mChemist, Pluss, Medikoe and BigChemist. Brick-and-mortar retail pharmacies such as MedPlus and Guardian Lifecare have also entered the online segment.