MetroMedi: A one-stop solution for all health care needs

In 2018, with the increasing penetration of Jio, Smartphones, and WhatsApp, Dileep started MetroMedi with a mission to deliver 100% genuine medicines to the consumers’ doorstep. Maruthi joined him in early 2019 and together started working on growth and expansion.  

Customers share their prescriptions with MetroMedi’s trained health care assistants, and the startup delivers the medication to them on a recurring cycle. Keeping Hyderabad as the base, the company started delivering healthcare in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Kakinada, Guntur, and Rajahmundry. 

MetroMedi is offering more than just the delivery of the medicines. It is a platform that helps patients automatically refill, recommends health foods, and educates users with health tips. The company has built strong partnerships with distributors across these geographies and works directly with them to secure supplies at lower costs. It then undercuts the pricing of over-the-top counters, providing medicines to its customers at an affordable price. So far, MetroMedi has fulfilled more than 100,000 orders with a 95% prescription fill rate. 

The focus is on delivering health and wellness in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. With the opening of two brick and mortar stores Metromedi is looking to build the first omni-channel health store business focused on Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. The plan is to open a health store in every city we are operational. The idea is to use these health stores to develop customer loyalty, educate customers and deliver more healthcare services like health check-ups etc.  Recently we partnered with SRL Diagnostics and Doctor C to offer diagnostics. The goal is to become a one stop solution for all health care needs.

We at Bangalore Insider recently got in touch with Maruthi Medisetti, CEO & Co-founder, MetroMedi. Here are the excerpts of the interview.

Give a brief info about your startup?

In 2018, with the increasing penetration of Jio, Smartphones, and WhatsApp, Dileep started MetroMedi with a mission to deliver 100% genuine medicines to the consumers’ doorstep. Maruthi joined him in early 2019 and together started working on growth and expansion.  

Customers share their prescriptions with MetroMedi’s trained health care assistants, and the startup delivers the medication to them on a recurring cycle. Keeping Hyderabad as the base, the company started delivering healthcare in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Kakinada, Guntur, and Rajahmundry. 

MetroMedi is offering more than just the delivery of the medicines. It is a platform that helps patients automatically refill, recommends health foods, and educates users with health tips. The company has built strong partnerships with distributors across these geographies and works directly with them to secure supplies at lower costs. It then undercuts the pricing of over-the-top counters, providing medicines to its customers at an affordable price. So far, MetroMedi has fulfilled more than 100,000 orders with a 95% prescription fill rate. 

The focus is on delivering health and wellness in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. With the opening of two brick and mortar stores Metromedi is looking to build the first omni-channel health store business focused on Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. The plan is to open a health store in every city we are operational. The idea is to use these health stores to develop customer loyalty, educate customers and deliver more healthcare services like health check-ups etc.  Recently we partnered with SRL Diagnostics and Doctor C to offer diagnostics. The goal is to become a one stop solution for all health care needs.

What made you start your startup and what problem does it solve?

The way MetroMedi works is simple – patients share their prescriptions through WhatsApp, and MetroMedi staff then delivers the medication to them on a recurring cycle. The main focus of MetroMedi is to solve the purpose of the people in Tier 2-3 cities by delivery them the medicines at their doorstep at the earliest. It is a platform that helps patients automatically refill, recommends health foods, and educates users with health tips. The company has built strong partnerships with distributors across these geographies and works directly with them to secure supplies at lower costs. It then undercuts the pricing of over-the-top counters, providing medicines to its customers at an affordable price.

Tell us about yourself, your previous jobs/ventures? What were you doing before this startup?

I was graduated from NIT-W as a Chemical Engineer. In pursuit of entrepreneurial spirit, I joined an e-commerce start-up founded by ex-Walmart Labs

CTO. I worked on digital marketing and revenue growth. Later I went on to start

Prestoo, an ed-tech gaming platform to teach concepts of Math and Physics to 5-10th

grade kids, because of bad product-market fit he shut down operations of Prestoo. I

later joined the founding team of Almabase, an ed-tech SaaS platform for Universities in U.S. Almabase today has 250+ customers. I joined Dilip in early 2019 as the Co-

founder.

Where is your startup based out of?

MetroMedi is based of Hyderabad.

Have you raised funding? If yes, then we would like to know the details. If no then please tell us if you are looking to raise.

We are funded by angel investors. For the first six months we did not raise any funds and bootstrapped the company. We said to ourselves that we will not burn money like other players without figuring out the right business model. During this time we were iterating on the business model and figuring out ways to deliver value to the consumers and nail the product-market fit. Once we hit a point and figured out a profitable business model we raised a seed round to double down and grow. 

Tell us about the founder and how did you meet each other?

Dileep B C is a serial entrepreneur who resigned from civil services at the Ministry of Defence to pursue his passion of creating employment and creating an impact in the society. He founded Vensoft India Pvt. Ltd in the year 1998 which has grown into a size of 300 now. During his entrepreneurship journey, he has realized the need for quality healthcare and established Value Pharma Retail in 2010.

Maruthi M comes with a strong experience of working in tech start-ups in the e-commerce and education space. Dileep and Maruthi met 7 years ago and have been brainstorming on building
a health foods business. After trying a couple of concepts and shelving them they finally took the leap with MetroMedi to work on healthcare.