In Conversation With Talha Shaikh, Co-founder, Biddano

The last 5 years have been incredible for Biddano. Where do you see Biddano in the next one year?

Biddano has grown tremendously and has positively impacted all stakeholders involved in healthcare supply chain management. Internally, we have grown into a wonderful team of 30 individuals who bring their valuable expertise to the organization.

Over the next six months, we are planning to steadily add 25 cities and by this time next year, we plan on expanding that to 100 cities across India. With our phased strategy we wish to educate and streamline the entire healthcare ecosystem.

In addition, we are looking at growing our social impact footprint. Towards that, we plan to grow our expansion into towns and villages where the fragmentation is most observed. We are currently planning to add 100 villages in the next 6 months and exponentially grow that number in a year.

What is the biggest challenge in the healthcare supply chain right now? Why is it the biggest challenge?

At the core of all the challenges is that healthcare services are not affordable and accessible which affects the end consumer, the essential component of the supply chain. While Biddano initially started with the aim to fix this, the problems in the ecosystem became even more apparent to us on our journey.

The biggest challenge for the healthcare supply chain is the unreliable and untimely delivery between distributors and pharmacists. This results in a lack of order tracking and unpredictability, limiting the reach and potential growth for distributors.

How do you think Biddano tech solution helps users?

Powered with tech, we are simplifying order management for manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies so that they can better predict demand and address issues swiftly and efficiently. Through our tech-led platform, we help all the stakeholders stay organized, which eventually helps them track and analyse data across channels.

By organizing supply chain data, the manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies are all able to predict and analyze procurement, delivery channels and overall costs This eventually leads to reduced loss percentage for all stakeholders as they are now more aware of all the available choices.

Shifting landscapes has rendered it impossible for small offline pharmacies to be recognized and to grow. It is here we believe that empowerment plays a crucial role. With our tech-enabled platform, all our stakeholders are better aware and prepared for their services.

What are some of your learning from the last 5 years of running Biddano?

One of the biggest lessons we learnt in the past 5 years is that the existing market has many underlying problems which need innovative and precise solutions. While we started as a B2C company, we soon realized that the stakeholders have specific issues that cant be solved with our setup.

As we pivoted to a tech led B2B model in 2018, we realized that we want to empower all the stakeholders that are involved. We focused on adding value by constantly testing to find the product market fit which resulted in unexpected growth.

To put it simply, we’ve learnt that solving for value is the only way to sustain and eventually create profit.

How has the healthcare supply chain ecosystem changed in the last 5 years?

We think the biggest change has been the accelerated digital adoption among all the stakeholders within the ecosystem. It is a key factor that has rapidly helped in the growth and adaptability of our tech solution.

What were your learnings from Covid?

We saw a massive 36% growth when the second wave hit. The intense spike helped us better understand the underlying problem in supply and demand management for distributors, and the unreliability of infrastructure to support the growing demand. Our model now intuitively understands these gaps and aims to provide a more human centered approach to the problem.

We realized that identifying key influencers in the market was an important step in bridging the gap. We ensured that trusted partners helped us grow not only for profit but also to help empower retailers and key participants who were at the forefront of the pandemic fight.