[Funding alert] Healthcare startup Biddano raises $2M in pre-Series A1 round

Healthcare supply chain platform Biddano on Monday said it has raised $2 million in a pre-Series A1 round from new and existing investors, including Gokul Rajaram, JPIN, Venture Catalysts UK, and AngelList, among others.

The startup said it will use the investment to scale its product development, enter new markets, and for product innovation.

Investors such as Anuj Srivastava and Ramakant Sharma, Co-founders of Livspace, also participated in the round.

Founded in 2016 by Talha Shaikh and Ashok Yadav, Biddano helps bridge supply chain gaps between distributors and chemists with its full-stack technology platform. It uses a ‘plug and expand' model to help distributors manage their demand and supply, especially when they're scaling.

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Currently, it serves more than 20,000 pharmacies, and plans to scale to more than a lakh in the next 12 months.

"I am excited to partner with Talha, Ashok, and the entire Biddano team on their journey to build the leading healthcare supply chain platform, and strongly believe they will revolutionise the healthcare services and pharma industries," said Gokul Rajaram, product and business helper at DoorDash, who also advises and helps startups scale.

Biddano said it will use the funding to also bolster its product, engineering and go-to-market teams, and hire across various roles. It plans to grow its headcount to 100, over the next ten months, from the current 30.

"There are more than two lakh SKUs (stock-keeping units) in the pharma and OTC category. A small pharmacy store doesn’t have to stock every SKU. Instead, they can place an order through Biddano and get it delivered in less than three hours," said Talha, Co-founder of the Pune-based startup.

The healthcare supply chain vertical has lately been seeing a lot of traction from healthcare services providers, as well as attracted a lot of institutional funding. Saveo, a Bengaluru-based startup, recently raised $4 million from Matrix Partners. Unicorn PharmeasyPharmeasy also recently started a supply chain subsidiary, Retailio. Digihealth, a company formed by a consortium of Cipla, SunPharma and other few pharma companies, also acquired IvyCap Ventures-backed Pharmrack earlier in April 2021.

Biddano says it is targetting more than 10 percent of all pharmacies in India over the next few months.

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