Dawa.ai

We are trying to cater the needs of 62.5% of the Indian population who can't afford basic medicines. The problem is very complex as people are not willing to purchase the medicines as per the prescription since it is not affordable, another option people prefer is to reduce the dosage. Either way, people are not able to get the benefit as desired. 

We are designing a platform, specifically an app to help people to choose among the generic version of the prescribed medicines. Recently, the GoI has notified that the generic name must be mentioned on the prescription. This is going to take due to the vested interests of the manufacturers but our solution is definitely going to help to a certain extent to bring the change. We are creating a n*n matrix for brands, formulation and the generic version. Since, there are multiple generics at different price points, the user would have the flexibility to go as per his/her requirements. 

We are also concerned about the delivery of the medicines, we are creating a module that would help us to deliver the medicines even in Tier3/4 cities or rural areas. 

We have segmented our customers based on multiple factors viz  the disposable income, the type of disease (chronic vs non-chronic), geography etc...Our target population are the marginalized communities who hesitate to refer to a medical practitioner because of the costs involved.  They avoid visiting a doctor during the initial stages to save the costs (consultation, medicines, follow-up, travel, loss of pay, etc) however they end up paying heavily (usually surgeries) at later stages as they chose not to get diagnosed at the right time. Timely action and a solution to mitigate the costs would have a chance to improve the health condition of such communities. We are trying to focus on awareness creation and bringing generics to the majority of the population by optimizing the supply chain costs. We are partnering with local pharmacies (8lacs+ India) which would give us the leverage to reach every nook and corner of the country and by leveraging the inventory data at a district level would help us plan and deliver the services in an efficient manner.

The founders have particularly worked with marginalized communities, they have spent their time in villages interacting with people, creating women empowerment, building ecosystems, nurturing microentrepreneurs, helping them with microfinance, understanding their lives to the minutest details. The keen observations help us to understand the pain points and needs of the target population. Moreover, we are able to note the changes in the purchasing behavior over the last 3 years. Some of the interesting points to note are...1. The person from a rural community is no more uneducated, they have basic education. 2. They do use smartphones to order their products. 3. Since, the information and data are available these days, they would ask relevant questions. 4. Their disposable income may be low but they want systemic solutions. 5. They prefer to support sustainable solutions.

We are also interacting with people (patients, doctors, nurses, staff, pharmacies, etc.)  at Government Hospitals to understand the challenges in detail. 

In addition to the above, the founder is an alumnus of IIT Bombay & IIM Ranchi. He brings 11+ years of experience across varied fields like Community Development, Microentrepreneur Ecosystems, Last Mile Connectivity, etc as he has worked with Social Sector, Startups & Corporates.

At this stage, we are looking for someone who can handhold us, mentor us, provide guidance and support. 

We are confident about the managerial part, however, we would need support to collect and monitor the data.

We are not actively looking for funds at this moment as we have received some grants from GoI, but it would definitely help if you could help us to raise more funds.

We are using Optical Character Recognition & Speech to Text to simply the processes. In addition to the above, we are building an asset lite model by creating a network of retail pharmacies.

SDG 3: Good health and wellbeings

We plan to impact around 700 beneficiaries in the first year with the help of 150 pharmacies and 10 microentrepreneurs. We plan to impact around 5000 beneficiaries with the help of around 500 pharmacies across multiple geographies.

No. of pharmacies

Beneficiaries

Micro entrepreneurs

Reach (Geography)

No. of transaction

Avg. value of transactions

Surgeries if any

Change in consumer behaviour: The smartphone adoption would increase from 54% (2021) to 78% (2025)

The no. of household using pharmacies would increase to 70Mn (2025) from 9Mn (2021)

A Web

A Software

3 Applications ( Consumer, Pharmacy & Delivery)

Key Features

OCR/STT

Branded vs Generic Flexibility

Real-time integration of inventory

We believe in equality and we respect multiple cultures & ethnicities

B2B2C & B2G

We have received some grants, we would be pitching to get more investements.

Grant of INR 12.1 lacs has been received, we expect our expenses for the first year would be around 10 lacs.