Online drugstore Pharmeasy has agreed to buy two-thirds stake in Thyrocare Technologies Ltd. for around Rs 4,546 crore—in what’s the first acquisition of a listed firm by a unicorn in India.
Docon Technologies Pvt., a subsidiary of API Holdings Ltd.—Pharmeasy’s parent—will make the acquisition, the diagnostic laboratory chain informed the exchanges on June 25. The unicorn’s founders—Dharmil Sheth, Dhaval Shah, Harsh Parekh, Hardik Dedhia and Siddharth Shah—would buy as many as 3.49 crore shares of Thyrocare at Rs 1,300 apiece, the filings said.
Docon will make an open offer for additional 26% stake purchase, amounting to Rs 1,788.2 crore. This transaction is subject to regulatory and other approvals, the company said.
Dr A Velumani, chairman and managing director of Thyrocare, will separately acquire a minority non-controlling stake of less than 5% in API Holdings as part of equity investments by its existing and new investors.
The transaction could strengthen Pharmeasy’s position as one of India’s largest digital healthcare brands, helping it provide an integrated platform that will bring tech-enabled healthcare for consumers, doctors and suppliers. Pharmeasy turned a unicorn—or a startup valued at $1 billion or more—earlier this year.
PharmEasy along with RetailIO, a B2B pharma marketplace, and the consultation and EMR platform DocOn has a network of over 6,000 digital consultation clinics and more than 90,000 partner retailers across the country. This will combine with Thyrocare’s network of more than 3,330 collection centres across 2,000 towns and cities.
The company expects synergies arising out of the acquisition to accelerate delivery of high-quality diagnostic and outpatient services to nearly 800 million Indians.
“Our aim is to deliver all outpatient healthcare products and services to every Indian within 24 hours,” Siddharth Shah, chief executive officer of of API Holdings, was quoted as saying in a statement.
(Corrects an earlier version that misstated the acquisition share price.)
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