Quick pharma startup Plazza to expand store network with $15 mn funding
Plazza expects to expand to other cities, and is gunning for over 3,000 stores in the next three to four years.
Quick medicine delivery platform Plazza has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round co-led by Accel, Elevation Capital, and Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors All In Capital and Better Capital.
The funding will be used to expand the store network, founder and chief executive Aman Priyadarshi told Mint on Monday.
“We have a couple of stores in Bengaluru that we have been experimenting with, and now we've raised capital to increase our geographical footprint. We are launching about 10 stores very quickly in the next eight weeks, and we will have about 20 stores in the city by the end of this year,” he said.
In a year’s time, Plazza expects to expand to other cities, and is gunning for over 3,000 stores in the next three to four years.
Founded in 2024, Plazza is focused on stocking a larger inventory and offering quick deliveries of 15-30 minutes to edge its way into the country’s crowded pharmacy market. While traditional pharmacies optimise walk-in retail with a smaller catchment area, and established online pharmacy players prioritize inventory over speed, Plazza’s model focuses on a wider catchment area around its stores, along with quick deliveries.
It’s also using artificial intelligence to build store-specific inventories, with a focus on micro-market demand.
The fresh capital will also be used to strengthen Plazza's technology platform, deepening its AI-driven inventory and assortment intelligence, the company said in a press release.
The startup has an omnichannel model, with physical stores and online deliveries, however, prioritising the latter. “We expect our customers to place an order on an app or WhatsApp, and we deliver. We use a large part of the space to store inventory, and that's how we have done our manpower planning, our store design, etc.,” said Priyadarshi.
AI-driven approach
As opposed to retail pharmacies, which typically stock 5,000 medicines, resulting in prescription fill rates of 50-60%, Plazza stocks over 40,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs), using AI-powered inventory intelligence to continuously learn local prescribing patterns, it said.
Its AI-powered inventory planning system adapts each store’s assortment to neighbourhood-level demand. Across its two Bengaluru stores, only around 50% of the top-selling medicines overlap, highlighting how significantly prescription behaviour varies across micro-markets.
The firm has grown GMV by about 27x between June 2025 and March 2026.
The country’s organized pharmacy retail space has seen rapid consolidation, dominated by giants such as Tata 1mg and Apollo 24/7. Recent funding activity in the space has been sparse and targeted towards firms addressing gaps. Generics-focused Truemeds raised $85 million in a Series C round in August 2025, led by Accel and Peak XV.
PlatinumRx, another generic medicine startup, raised $6 million in a Series A round in September 2025, led by Stellaris Venture Partners.
Source: Livemint — Companies
