Healthcare services platform Medlife International Private Limited has acquired medicine-delivery app Myra Medicines in a cash and stock deal.
Tushar Kumar, Medlife’s chief executive officer, confirmed the deal with VCCircle on Monday.
Myra’s founders Faizan Aziz and Anirudh Coontoor as well as a few investors will receive shares of Medlife as part of the deal, while some others will take a cash exit, Kumar said.
“Medicine delivery is something that customers are used to getting in 30 minutes from their local pharmacy and we want to now give them the same experience on our platform,” he said, adding that Medlife will be able to access a larger market because of Myra’s express delivery capabilities. “From a cost perspective because of the efficiencies that Myra has built, we will be able to offer the express service without affecting our unit economics,” he said.
Myra – run by Metatrain Software Solutions Private Limited – was earlier in talks with the ANI Technologies Private Limited-run Ola Cabs, according to The Economic Times. However, those negotiations fell through following which talks with Medlife began.
Myra’s 45-member team will be absorbed by Medlife, with Aziz and Coontoor heading up the product and engineering departments, according to the report. The full integration of Myra’s services is expected to take up to six months.
This is the second reported acquisition that Medlife has made this year. In January, it bought Mumbai-based digital healthcare platform and home diagnostics services company MedLabz for an undisclosed sum. “The sophisticated diagnostic capabilities offered by MedLabz will help us strengthen our position in the diagnostics segment,” Kumar had said of that acquisition.
Medlife was founded in 2014 by Kumar and Prashant Singh and began operations with online drug deliveries before expanding into online consultations with medical professionals and diagnostics. The company is currently looking to raise capital from external sources, according to The Economic Times.
Myra, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, was founded in 2013. Prior to founding Myra, Aziz was chief technology officer at startup Dexetra, which developed a Siri-like voice assistant app for Android, while Coontoor was a software engineer at Nokia. Investors in the company include Matrix Partners India and media company Times Internet, as well as angel investors such as Quikr co-founder Pranay Chulet and Vy Capital associate director Vamsi Duvvuri.
