IPO-bound online pharmacy startup PharmEasy makes its third big acquisition this year

• Aknamed is into providing supply chain solutions for hospital chains and mid-sized hospitals.
• PharmEasy is acquiring three-year-old Aknamed for upto $200 million as per sources.
• Prior to this, PharmEasy acquired rival Medlife and publicly listed company Thyrocare this year.

Online pharmacy startup PharmEasy, which is working towards an initial public offering (IPO) soon, has acquired cloud-based hospital supply chain management startup Aknamed.

According to the ministry of corporate affairs filings accessed by Business Insider, Aknamed has allotted 9,75,937 equity shares to PharmEasy. The stake sale aggregates to ₹308 crore or $42 million as per the filing. However, sources aware of the development told Business Insider that the total deal is pegged somewhere between $190-$200 million.

Post this transaction, Aknamed will become a subsidiary of PharmEasy’s parent company API Holdings Private Limited.

Business Insider has reached out to PharmEasy and Aknamed seeking more details about the deal.

As per the filings, PharmEasy has bought out the stake of five promoters of Aknamed — Saurabh Pandey, Mahadevan Narayanamoni, Mayank Kapoor, Shaunak Joshi and Varun Vohra — who collectively controlled a 50.67%.

So now, PharmEasy owns 67% stake in the company, Lightstone owns 31% and other stakeholders hold another 1.4%.

Founded in 2018, Aknamed is into providing supply chain solutions for hospital chains and mid-sized hospitals. It enables hospitals, nursing homes and clinics to track product movement and consumption as well. The company reported a revenue of ₹24 crore in the financial year 2020, with a net loss of ₹3.4 crore, as per data platform Tofler.

This is the third acquisition carried out by PharmEasy in 2021. The Mumbai-based startup acquired publicly listed diagnostics chain Thyrocare in June this year, which has made it simpler for the company to hit the public market.

Siddharth Shah, cofounder and chief executive of API Holdings, in a previous conversation told Business Insider that the company is looking at a dual listing or a reverse listing option.

A dual listing is a corporate structure in which two companies function as a single operating business through a legal equalisation agreement. A reverse listing, on the other hand, is acquisition of a private company by an existing public company, so that the private company can bypass the lengthy and complex process of going public.

ALSO WATCH: PharmEasy's Founder Siddharth Shah Gets Candid On His Success Formula

Besides this, PharmEasy also officially announced its merger with rival Medlife this year. “This will make us the largest healthcare delivery platform across the country by a distance — serving more than two million families every single month,” Dhaval Shah, cofounder of PharmEasy, wrote on LinkedIn while announcing the deal.

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