Biddano, founded in 2016 by Talha Shaikh and Ashok Yadav, is a B2B healthcare logistics platform that offers pharmacies and hospitals with faster and more dependable delivery.
Talha Shaikh and Ashok Yadav noticed the Indian healthcare supply chain was fragmented and filled with flaws at every level of the network in November 2016. With their firm Biddano, the two wanted to help narrow this gap.
Biddano began as a business-to-consumer (B2C) pharmacy aggregator platform, assisting clients in obtaining prescription medications from neighbouring pharmacies within 45 minutes (acute markets).
Talha Shaikh, co-founder and CEO of Biddano, said, “Customers may upload prescriptions, which were then routed to local pharmacies based on their geolocation. We have clever algorithms operating the backend, assisting pharmacies in receiving, packing, and delivering orders to clients, similar to the Swiggy approach.”
Over 700 pharmacies were onboarded on a single technological platform by the Pune-based business, which conducted operations for six to seven months. It soon received over 3,000 prescriptions, but the pharmacies ran out of most goods.
Because many pharmacies lack an inventory management system, tracking inventory becomes a laborious task. When pharmacies receive an order, they check their inventory, accept the request, and deliver three out of five goods.
Again, the stockist, distributor, or sub-distributor would require 24 hours to distribute the drugs to pharmacies for a variety of reasons in the business-to-business (B2B) supply chain.
Talha states, “When the co-founders realized these inefficiencies, they decided to restructure Biddano’s whole business model and move from B2C to B2B. We had done our research and discovered that there was no firm in India that concentrated on the B2B pharma market.”
While Talha is in charge of business expansion, team building, and public relations, Ashok (CSO) is in charge of strategic alliances and investor relations. Its corporate office employs more than 100 individuals. The company has offices in Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
Biddano’s two main products try to alleviate these inefficiencies by connecting stockists with pharmacies. Biddano’s initial product, Bkart, is a B2B healthcare logistics infrastructure that enables super stockists, stockists, or distributors to contact as many pharmacies as possible in order to deliver items to pharmacies in less than three hours.
“This digital platform enables stockists send orders to pharmacies rather of going via middlemen like sub-distributors,” Talha says.
This allows stockists to provide greater savings to pharmacies, which they may then pass on to end-users, while also expanding their geographical reach. These deliveries are made by Biddano’s 1,200 delivery executives on the ground.
Shortbuk, Biddano’s second offering, became available in January 2022 to assist pharmacies and hospital labs in obtaining FMCG or OTC items from local distributors and brands on time. Talha comments on the debut of Shortbuk, saying, “We already have a healthcare logistics system in place, with drugs delivered to pharmacies every day and every three hours.
So, we attempted to integrate the FMCG or OTC vertical with our pharma vertical and send items to pharmacies in three hours or every single day, along with credit, since that would be a significant value offer.”
To serve its network of pharmacies, Biddano is a distribution channel partner for numerous FMCG brands, including Dabur India, Himalaya Wellness Company, Hindustan Unilever Limited, and others.
Biddano has expanded its Shortbuk service to four major cities in four months, including Pune, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, and Nashik. Biddano’s main income source comes from its healthcare logistics service-based model, in which it charges super stockists a variable commission ranging from 1 to 2 percent on every order they deliver through Biddano’s network.
It uses a normal cost-revenue model for its FMCG marketplace platform, in which Biddano buys items at specific costs from companies, adds its margin, and sells them to retailers or pharmacies. The firm claims to have made Rs 5.59 crore in sales in FY22.
Biddano has secured $3 million in funding led by Gokul Rajaram, a board member at Pinterest and Product Manager at Silicon Valley-based Doordash.
The round was also attended by new investors JPIN Venture Catalysts UK and Ramakant Sharma (Founder, Livspace), as well as previous investors Venture Catalysts and AngelList. Later this year, it plans to raise a Series A investment to bolster its leadership teams across all verticals and introduce a new platform.
Biddano, which competes with Saveo from Bengaluru, is present in 20 cities and wants to grow to 25 cities across India by the end of 2022. In addition, Biddano will provide financial services for all stakeholders in the healthcare value chain. It also intends to make credit available to small merchants with no credit history.
