Providing healthcare for 160 million people is always a tough task. Even if that is available, sourcing prescribed medicines is even more difficult. If that ailment is uncommon requiring special drugs, the problem is serious. Startup Arogga comes in here hoping to provide prescribed medicine right to the doorstep ensuring quality and reasonable price without the hassle of visiting a pharmacy.
Healthtech Scenario of Bangladesh
Online and remote access health care startups have taken off recently partly pushed by the Covid-19 from early last year. There was a sudden shortage of available services, and people faced restriction on movement due to lockdowns. Popular startups like Doctorola, DoctorsBD, and Rx71 moved in to fill this demand gap.
The same went for medicine supply as well. Popular delivery services like Pathao, Food Panda, and Shohoz also introduced a separate pharmaceuticals section to deliver medicines directly to homes. Arogga, formed in the early months of 2020 was able to move in and grew rapidly in a short period in this market sector.
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The Story of Arogga
Arogga was founded by Rosina Mazumder, an investment banker turned entrepreneur. She left investment banking to start her publishing venture, the Cake Masters. This magazine has been very successful with over 125K followers across social media platforms and millions of readership within a decade.
Rosina and her three co-founders Yawar Mehboob, Shamim Hasan and Fahad Hossain felt that the main problem in Bangladesh was the cost and availability of medicines forcing many to go without meds even. Added to that in the pandemic situation was the problem of physically procuring the meds. Arogga felt it could very much address this demand.
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Building the Startup
Arogga decided to work with the pricing of medication first. Most conventional medication delivery apps source the medicines in retail from Pharmacies after getting an order. So there is no price commission but delivery charge has to be added making profits less.
What Arogga did was partner up with the leading medical manufacturers to source medicines in bulk quantity. This strategy developed from Aroggo’s own experience. When it began, Arogga was looking at a daily order of over 200 on an average. But due to the pandemic, the company failed to source products from the market forcing the company to temporarily shut down
So Arogga set up a climate-controlled warehouse, a pharmacy and a 10 member staff along with a certified pharmacist. This brought about a huge change in the business, and Arogga has seen a 60% month-on-month growth since restarting its business in late 2020.
The company even managed to secure 200K dollars of seed funding from Falcon Network which made the business expansion possible.
Finding a Place in the Market
Startups always face a sustainability challenge which Arogga did and overcame. The 60% month-on growth and over 6500 deliveries meant Arogga was finding its space in the medicine delivery market. And it doesn’t have too many challengers in the market working on its model right now.
Arogga’s big draw is its customer retention rate, almost 55%. Most of the clients are chronically ill patients which means repeat orders. Arogga has focused on this niche and done very well.
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What Sets Arogga Apart?
Its focus on the customer-centric approach and acquiring meds directly from manufacturers has done wonders. It can provide original medicines at a cheaper rate than the pharmacies do without any extra delivery charge and it works.
The ordering process is very customer-friendly which makes it a client’s dream. Instead of typing orders online on digital forms, one can simply upload a picture of the prescription and get delivery at the desired location. The ease with which the users can navigate their app is what has prompted over 20,000 downloads on the Android platform since its inception.
Bottom Line
The health-tech sector of Bangladesh is still in its nascent stage with high growth opportunities. Bangladesh-based medicine delivery Startup Arogga is one of the first companies to make the process a digital one. The innovative approach and user-friendly service has made Arogga a success.
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