How this Entrepreneur is Empowering Indians with Consistent Healthcare His motto is to use knowledge and digital connectivity to reduce cost and add convenience in making available high-quality medicines, healthcare products and services
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According to a FICCI report, 25% of the drugs sold in India are counterfeit while 74% of the nutrition constituents widely available are forged. According to the World Health Organization, WHO, an estimated, 649 million people in India do not have regular access to essential medicines or affordable healthcare! Despite being one of the biggest producers of drugs and having a large pool of talented doctors and healthcare executives, it is surprising that a major portion of the Indian population does not have consistent access to affordable healthcare.
These two reports alarmed B. L. Mittal and led to the inception of SastaSundar, an Indian phrase, which denotes consumers' aspiration for high quality at low cost. The problem, Mittal realised is big but the cause is simple, i.e., lack of connectivity.
"I perceived an easy solution for this which involved the leveraging of efficient digital connectivity. Therefore, to solve one of the biggest problems in India, we decided to launch SastaSundar," shared Mittal, Founder and Executive Chairman of SastaSundar. The company has since then shown tremendous growth and currently has an annual turnover of INR155cr (US$23.5mn) and is handling more than 1.5lakhs orders per month.
Mittal started his career in 1992 with Birla Corporation Limited, where he worked for 8 years and thereafter founded financial services business, Microsec Financial Services Limited from scratch. Starting from three people to building a team of 800 people, Mittal aptly proved his mettle as a leader.
Empowering a Billion Indians with Consistent Healthcare
Lack of systematic health information and counselling, unorganised distribution system largely based on artificially created SKUs of branded generics have resulted in the present abject health situation of the country. Lack of connectivity between doctors, path labs, service providers, and producers with customers further aggravates it. "A system which works on assumptions and past experiences rather than on data and futuristic intelligence has to be flawed. Lack of systematic tracking of the production, delivery and services create a life risk model of fake drugs and services," rued Mittal.
Today's digital technology has opened doors for enormous opportunities to organise and establish connectivity across the country. SastaSundar has taken this as a mission to use knowledge and digital connectivity to reduce cost and make available high-quality medicines, healthcare products and services, making life simple and happy. "My sole motivation is the idea of empowering a billion Indians with consistent healthcare in a convenient and affordable manner," enthused the writer of two books - Chanakya Niti – A Perspective to Investing in Shares and Leader of Leaders – Learn Leadership from Children.
The platform is India's leading digital network of healthcare. SastaSundar manages efficient pharma and wellness products' supply chain and connecting doctors, diagnostic services, healthcare clinics and health information services.
Spreading Health Awareness by Leveraging Digital Connectivity
"The purpose is to use knowledge and digital connectivity to reduce cost and add convenience in making available high-quality medicines, healthcare products and services to make life simple and happy," shared Mittal.
SastaSundar.com is built on an online to offline model, where we innovated a unique idea of establishing physical healthcare centres called "Healthbuddy Centres" in every local area. "A Healthbuddy is a low-cost physical healthcare centre which holds the license to function as "Retail Chemist and Druggist" and is equipped with the digital "Know Health" info bank. There is a constant presence of qualified pharmacist to counsel our consumers," notified Mittal.
The journey, however, has not been smooth and SastaSundar has faced a serious challenge in conveying the knowledge of healthy living. To deal with it Mittal has started a knowledge-based channel namely "Know Health" which consists of health articles and unique health tools like "Symptom Checker". Spreading knowledge and health awareness through the digital channel is his primary focus.
Future Plans
Presently SastaSundar.com is on a growth path and looking forward to a pan-India expansion. "The immediate plan is to expand to Delhi. Within the next five years, we see ourselves serving the entire nation with our self-sustainable model," shared Mittal whose Vision 2024 is making way for SastaSundar.com to launch and distribute Pharma and Wellness on a global scale.
