Drugs at your door: Signs of a disruption taking shape in India

India’s pharmaceutical retail market is showing early signs of a behavioural shift toward convenience-led repeat consumption, as quick-commerce platforms expand deeper into medicine delivery, even as overall sales growth remains muted, data reviewed by ET Online showed.

A trend identified from research firm Pharmarack’s data revealed that the entry of rapid delivery platforms has not yet translated into broad-based shifts but early signs reflect a developing picture.

Retail sales data across a basket of pharmaceutical brands indicates that total sales remained largely flat between August 2025 and January 2026, moving in a narrow range of Rs 20,800–21,100 crore before declining to around Rs 20,000 crore by March 2026, as per the data.

Beneath this flat topline, category-level divergence is becoming visible

Within this flat overall trend, category-level divergence was sharp, with repeat-use wellness brands gaining mid-to-high single digit percentage growth (Aug 2025–Mar 2026), while several acute-care brands declined in the low-to-mid single digits over the same period, according to Pharmarack data.

Brand-level performance shows a clear divergence. Repeat-use and wellness-linked products — including Centrum Silver and A to Z, along with chronic therapies such as Glycitop and Gabaneuron Gold — recorded steady gains after August. In contrast, several acute-care brands such as Ornigyl and Zenfer XT showed a softer or declining trend over the same period.

“The rise of wellness brands is part of a broader trend in which younger consumers, including Gen Z, as well as older, more informed consumers are seeking products that align with ideas of longevity and health consciousness,” Sujay Shetty, Global Leader of Health Industries at PwC India told ET Online.

“In addition, the growing consumerization of patients in the digital world is playing a significant role in this shift,” Shetty of PwC India added.

Sumeet Chandna, Partner in Life Sciences, EY-Parthenon India also signalled this shift is part of a broader trend emerging in the industry, adding that anyway “online shopping remains a small part of overall acute medicine shopping.”

Quick commerce enters the medicine aisle

The shift coincides with the expansion of quick-commerce platforms into pharmaceuticals. On August 7, 2025, quick-commerce startup Zepto launched a 10-minute medicine delivery service across key metros including Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, marking its entry into a highly regulated segment traditionally dominated by pharmacies and e-pharmacy platforms.

Announcing the move, cofounder and CEO Aadit Palicha said the company was starting with over 1,000 products across major pharmacy categories, with a pipeline of 10,000+ SKUs (stock-keeping units), while cautioning that expansion would be measured given regulatory and operational complexities. The move placed Zepto in direct competition with players such as PharmEasy, Tata 1mg and Apollo Pharmacy.

The quick-commerce model — built on dark stores, proximity and instant fulfilment — is particularly suited to high-frequency, low-friction purchases, which is reflected in the relative outperformance of repeat-use categories in the retail data.

From prescriptions to patterns

The divergence in brand performance suggests that quick commerce may be influencing how consumers buy medicines, rather than how much they buy — at least for now.

Repeat-use categories, such as vitamins and chronic therapies, are typically characterised by:

• Regular consumption cycles
• Lower immediacy compared to acute treatments
• Higher suitability for app-based reordering

These traits align closely with quick-commerce behaviour, where convenience, speed and predictability drive purchases. In contrast, acute-care drugs — often tied to episodic illness and prescriptions — appear less responsive to this shift, as reflected in the decline of several such brands in the dataset.

“E-pharmacies are organised databases with a very user-friendly interface that makes it easier for buyers to pick up options that they might be looking for… It may not be possible to do so in traditional pharmacies..On top of this you have the right content that describes the use case and benefits well,” Vishal Manchanda, an analyst with Systematix Institutional Equities told ET Online.

Digital commerce: From clicks to cures

According to EY-Parthenon, India’s over-the-counter (OTC) drug market is undergoing a structural transformation, with increasing digitisation of consumer behaviour. The firm estimates that the OTC market will grow from around Rs 47,000 crore to Rs 98,000 crore by 2030, at a 13% compound annual growth rate.

A key driver of this expansion is the migration of consumers to digital channels, particularly for wellness and preventive healthcare products. EY-Parthenon notes that a significant share of consumers now prefer online platforms for purchasing vitamins, supplements and everyday health products, driven by convenience, wider availability and ease of comparison.

This shift — often described as the move from “clicks to cures” — is blurring the line between traditional pharmacy retail and e-commerce, creating space for quick-commerce players to capture incremental share in digitally compatible categories.

Early gains, but structural limits

Despite these tailwinds, the retail sales data suggests that the impact of quick commerce remains incremental rather than transformative at this stage.

The absence of a sustained post-August surge in overall sales indicates that quick commerce is currently redistributing demand rather than expanding the market outright. Gains in repeat-use categories appear to be offset by declines in others, resulting in a broadly flat trend.

There are also structural constraints. Medicine delivery operates within a tight regulatory framework, requiring prescription validation, storage compliance and pharmacist oversight — factors that limit the speed and scale at which quick-commerce models can expand compared to grocery or FMCG.

Additionally, the model may be less suited to acute or emergency therapies, where doctor consultation and prescription remain central to the purchase decision.

A reshaping, not a surge

Taken together, the data points to an early-stage shift: quick commerce is beginning to reshape consumption patterns in India’s pharma retail market, particularly in repeat-use and wellness segments, without yet driving a broad-based increase in overall sales.

As platforms expand product ranges and deepen partnerships with e-pharmacy players, their influence is likely to grow — especially in categories where convenience, frequency and discretion play a decisive role.

For now, however, the transformation is visible not in headline growth, but in the quiet rebalancing of what consumers are choosing to buy — and how they are choosing to buy it.