Mission Healthcare Ecosystem’s Integration for Affordable & Available Healthcare

Medikabazaar set out from a one-room office in 2015 with a missionary zeal and dynamic leadership of Vivek Tiwari who had a successful leadership stints in leading MNCs earlier wherein he realized the acute necessity for an organized and fast procurement system in a highly unorganized and unevenly spread Indian healthcare industry. He also meticulously mapped around 20-30% inflated medical supplies cost due to the presence of intermediaries in supply chain thus further compounding the unaffordability of healthcare services. There was no earlier relevant precedent or reference to follow. It was a journey fraught with huge risk that could have cost a lot to this IIM graduate in his mid-30s. Unfazed, he decided to chart out his own path &destiny with his conviction and belief in this endeavor having far reaching implications for Indian healthcare. Vivek, while preparing for his healthcare entrepreneurial journey, is guided by his earlier and rich experiences across various industries comprising of global organizations in healthcare, FMCG sectors and other Indian conglomerates.

Insights gained from working in multiple industries contributed to the significant success of his healthcare startup. Vivek’s efficient execution of growth strategies, coupled with effective man-management made Medikabazaar into one of the fastest growing, trusted & admired brands in the healthcare industry in 2018. The idea of Medikabazaar in Indian healthcare is so powerful that it made some industry observers coin a new word, “Mid-level integration,” a management thought disruption. This integration helps Medikabazaar customers to shore up their middle line largely based on procurement, supply chain and inventory management, therefore, extracting the best and timely value of their financial resources by enabling better micro-management. The jury is out and reflects in strong integration of affordable procurement, rather acquirement with affordable healthcare delivery by healthcare providers. Medikabazaar has also emerged as the biggest integrating factor across the flora & fauna of the healthcare ecosystem. The company’s target customers are small, medium, and large hospitals, clinics, diagnostic centers, manufacturers, distributors, and resellers of medical products of all kinds. It has 100,000+ medical devices and consumables from more than 5000 manufacturers and vendors listed on its online B2B market place. The idea of Medikabazaar also furthers the objectives of Ayushman Bharat of affordable and available healthcare as the company aims to empower all small, medium and large healthcare providers to access affordable medical supplies as per their requirements. Vivek, a true visionary, has of late decided to introduce the best medical technologies across the globe to the Indian market to enable the country’s healthcare establishments provide appropriate diagnostic and treatment solutions to emerging complex medical problems.

A vision comes with its own set of challenges and various possibilities. Vivek has been working throughout the year on his pet project of AI & ML driven healthcare procurement, probably the first of its kind in the world. The challenges of predictive procurement analysis are huge as healthcare services are compulsion and not consumption based, hence they don’t follow any linear patterns. However initial pilots have been quite revealing and successful and would be nothing short of a tectonic shift in global healthcare procurement. As a strong votary of advanced Medtech systems, Vivek has aligned Medikabazaar with Andhra Pradesh Medtech Zone Limited (AMTZ), an emerging global leader in medical technologies, to promote Indian MedTech across the globe. He considers global exchange of medical technologies as an integral part of Affordable Universal Healthcare Coverage. His action plan for 2019 is:

  • Enhancing the coverage of pin code destinations from 20000 to 35000 for better healthcare accessibility
  • Connect with 50,000 hospitals
  • Enrolling more domestic and international vendors with Medikabazaar with a twin objective of promoting vendors of quality medical products irrespective of their sizes thus giving them a level playing field as well as enriching buying experience of domestic and international customers
  • Sharpen focus on international customers to cater to growing supplies requirements from global buyers
  • Launching AI &ML driven procurement tool to help buyers have better control on their purchase and inventory
  • Design and implement a vendor education and engagement program to help them in achieving cost-efficiencies and reducing wastages
  • Seek more VC funding to expand domestic and global footprints
  • To scale up the MedikaRecycle, and help its customers liquidate their locked, non-performing medical devices and surplus inventories and realize better value thereof

Last but not the least, launching more customer interaction and engagement programs to ensure Medikabazaar.com stays just a click away for their various medical needs.

The article was published in the January 2019 edition of Medgate Today

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