Last week, API Holdings, the parent company of the new healthtech unicorn PharmEasy, signed definitive documents to acquire 66.1 percent stake in Thyrocare Technologies Ltd (Thyrocare) from Dr A Velumani and affiliates at a price of Rs 1,300 per share, aggregating to Rs 4,546 crore.
In a conversation with YourStory on Clubhouse, Velumani talked about his meeting with Siddharth Shah, Co-founder of PharmEasy. Post this deal, Velumani is now looking to give back to the world. He said,
“Of the split of Rs 4,500 crore, I have put back Rs 1,500 crore back into PharmEasy, and Rs 3,500, I have kept for jobs. Young employees have always been my focus. Now, I’m focused on employment and create young entrepreneurs. Simply, to create jobs is to create value.”
He said he is looking at the salary bracket of Rs 2,00,000 to Rs 5,00,000 per annum. “I want to focus on the mid portion of the salaried pyramid. It is about the kind of salaries I want to generate for the middle-class. I am fairly sector agnostic in this. What I will look at is the number of employees, the turnover the company is creating, and what is the turnover per employee, cost per employee, and is it HR intensive?”
The and deal had been in the works for over a month, and is one of the most talked-about deals for various reasons. One, Dr Velumani’s journey from rags to riches is that of fairy tales, and second, it is one of the first transactions where a startup unicorn acquired a listed company.
Founded in 1996, Thryocare today is one of the leading diagnostics solution provider by volume, performing over 110 million tests annually. It is one of the largest B2B players in the diagnostics space and has a network of 3,330+ collection centres across 2,000+ towns in India. It operates a multi-lab model with a mega central processing lab, two zonal processing labs, and 13 regional processing labs across the country.
And yet, Velumani says,
“My journey has been fun and interesting. This is a unique marriage between PharmEasy and Thyrocare. I got many offers, but nothing struck. I wanted a certain premium for the company we had built grounds-up, and wanted to go to the next phase of my journey.”
The collaboration between PharmEasy and Thyrocare is unique and transformative for the Indian healthcare sector, consumers and the entire ecosystem. The synergies of both — India’s largest digital health platform and one of the largest, cost-effective diagnostics solution providers (by volume) is set to reimagine and accelerate the delivery of high-quality diagnostic and OPD services across the full continuum of patient care to nearly 800 million Indians.
