WellnessForever

Franchise Latest News,Franchise News India,Wellness Forever, a Mumbai-based lifestyle pharmacy chain that received Rs 20 crore venture funding this month, has chalked out an ambitious plan to more than triple its turnover in the next three years.

For this, the company management will expand the store footprint in existing and new geographies and add new ways to cater to its customers.

Gulshan Bakhtiani, co-founder and director, finance and strategy, Wellness Forever, told dna, “We have achieved Rs 300 crore turnover with 70 company-owned-company-operated (CoCo) pharmacies thus far. In the coming three years, we will have 250 pharmacies that will give us a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore. We will be adding 50 new pharmacies in the current fiscal and more than double the footprint in the following two years.” He said that the business has been growing annually at a compounded annual growth rate of 35% to 40%.

With an initial funding of Rs 20 crore from a consortium of HNIs and family offices led by Rajiv Dadlani Group, the company will over the next 12 months look to raise another Rs 100 crore in private equity to fund business expansion.

The company has presence in Maharashtra and one pharmacy inside a 220-bed hospital in Karnataka. While it plan to expand in Maharashtra, Wellness will start a market study in December to expand in Goa and Karnataka.

On the back-end infrastructure front, the company has already set up a warehousing and logistics facility in Bhiwandi at an investment of $1.5 million. Similar facilities will be established in Goa and Karnataka to facilitate store expansion in these markets. Expanding primarily through CoCo pharmacies, Wellness Forever will also take the franchise route. It is working on building a franchise model and has got on board Jagdeep Kapoor of Samsika Marketing Consultants to fine-tune the business model.

The first few Wellness Forever franchise stores, Bakhtiani said, will get operational by July this year, and by the end of this fiscal there will 20 franchisee pharmacies and the balance 30 will be CoCo stores. Each new pharmacy will call for an investment of around Rs 1 crore, excluding real estate cost and will become cash-flow positive within nine months of getting operational.

“On an average, each store will generate monthly sales of over Rs 30 lakh, giving an annual turnover of around Rs 4 crore. Once we achieve Rs 1,000 crore turnover with 250 pharmacies, the expansion strategy will largely revolve around adding franchisee stores in the existing and new geographies,” he said. Of the entire retail footprint in the coming three years, 100 stores will be franchisees and rest CoCo.

As online and mobile commerce have started gaining significant traction, the pharmacy chain is also working on a hybrid model that will allow customers place order on the company website or via a mobile application.



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