The Hindu Business Line : Aushadhi to spread wings to top-10 cities

Aimed at a strong pan-India presence before the year-end, Optival Health Solutions (P) Ltd, retailers and owners of Aushadhi pharmacy chain, has chalked out an expansion programme involving an investment of around Rs 30 crore.

The company, which currently has 53 stores in Hyderabad, is all set to open 22 more in the twin cities during the next 30 days. It also plans to roll out its first 30 stores in Bangalore by September-end. Towards this, the company has acquired space for 20 stores, its Chief Executive Officer, Dr Madhukar Gangadi, said.

Addressing newspersons, he said after Bangalore, the company would focus on Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai and Pune to have significant presence before the year-end. Each of these cities would have at least one central warehouse.

Other models

Apart from strong network of standalone stores, the company also plans to adopt other models for spreading its presence, which include shop-in-shops and franchisee networks. As a part of this, Aushadhi has tied-up with Magna chain of supermarkets for shop-in-shops. The company plans to enter into profit sharing arrangements with property owners in cities where the property prices are high, he said.

Stating that the company has spent around Rs 10 crore on Hyderabad and Bangalore operations, Dr Madhukar, a Wharton Business School MBA graduate, said the funds requirement for spreading over to top-ten cities was estimated at around Rs 30 crore more. "We are currently negotiating with a couple of Venture Capital Funds for raising the required funds and hope to firm up the deals shortly," he said.

Priority market

According to him, the priority market for Aushadhi is primarily urban and semi-urban and targeted at value seekers looking to obtain quality medicines, quality service and access to a wide range of therapeutic drugs. "We see a huge potential in India for pharma retailing and branded chains. Organised pharma retailing will give consumers a trusted source for buying genuine drugs," Dr Madhukar said.

Loyalty programme

Aimed at better serving its growing customer base, the company has announced a loyalty programme for senior citizens of over 58 years of age. Under this, the company provides a personalised card free-of-cost to senior citizens.

The cardholders would get a discount of 13.4 per cent on purchase of all medicines. Down the line, the company aims to enter into alliances with pharma majors for further taking the discounts to up to 20 per cent, he said.

The company has also decided to offer discounts on blood sugar testing services to its cardholders. "The test available at all our stores will cost general public a very reasonable price of Rs 30. But even this will be discounted for the senior citizen cardholders to cost only Rs 22," Dr Madhukar, also a medical graduate, said.

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Aushadhi to spread wings to top-10 cities