Sistema Asia Fund marks the second exit with stake sale in Netmeds

Sistema Asia Fund first invested in Netmeds in 2017 and this exit will gather attractive returns for the venture capital fund as the online pharmaceutical startup grew four times its size over the past three years.

Sistema Asia Fund announced that it has sold its stake in Netmeds, one of India’s leading online pharmaceutical marketplace. The deal is part of the transaction in which Reliance Retail Ventures Limited has acquired the e-pharmacy startup.

Sistema Asia Fund is a venture capital fund sponsored by Sistema PJSFC, a publicly-traded diversified Russian holding company. The fund focuses on investing in technology-enabled, consumer and business-oriented startups in India and Southeast Asia – namely those with exceptional teams, global scaling potential, and solid revenue streams.

The deal also marks it’s second exit and monetization, after selling its stake in Qwikcilver in March 2019. Sistema Asia Fund is in the process of doing a final close of its first fund this year at $120 million.

Andrey Terebenin, Managing Partner, Sistema Asia Capital said, “Since investing in Netmeds in 2017, Sistema Asia Fund has strengthened the startup’s leadership position in the burgeoning online pharmacy market by supporting the enhancement of supply chain and distribution network, as well as exploring the viability of its international expansion. Also, Netmeds’ rapid growth over the last few years underlines our strategy of investing in companies with strong scaling potential and solid revenue streams, and the key to that is the constructive cooperation from Pradeep and the Netmeds team.”

Andrey added “Reliance’s backing of Netmeds is a strong endorsement of our investment philosophy, which is to optimize our investors’ money into promising projects in India’s fast-growing technology market. We are confident that Reliance’s entry will accelerate Netmeds’ growth and help the startup establish itself as the leader in the online pharmacy sector. We want to wish Netmeds continued successful growth and realize its fullest potential with Reliance.”

Founded by Pradeep Dadha in 2010, Netmeds is one of India’s leading e-pharmacy brand driven to revolutionize India’s healthcare sector. Currently, the startup serves over 4 million customers nationwide, enabling them to purchase medicine online, sign up for monthly pharmaceutical subscriptions, book lab tests, organize health checkups, and consult verified doctors online.

The company’s services saw an especially high demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as their delivery service which supplied medicine to patients in over 14,000 regions across India.

Licious (a direct-to-consumer meat and seafood brand), Rebel Foods (a multi-brand full-stack online food-on-demand app), Uniphore (a conversational AI technology company), Lendingkart Technologies (an online financing company assisting SMEs with financing working capital for SMEs), HealthifyMe (a health and fitness mobile app), Seclore (an enterprise data security company) and Kissht (a consumer lending FinTech platform) are currently the eight companies that Sistema Asia Fund is an investor following its exit from Netmeds.