Sanitary pads, blood pressure pill telmisartan, anti-diabetes pill metformin and acid reflux medicine pantoprazole are the top-selling medicines at the government’s affordable medicine stores under Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Jan Aushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP), the top government official told News18.
The scheme sold 1.12 crore packets of sanitary pads of its own brand Suvidha in the last 6.5 months of the ongoing fiscal year. These are sold in packs of ten units, hence it sold 11.27 crore pads, so far – averaging at 1.73 crore sanitary pads every month. To provide affordable options to women in remote and rural areas, the scheme provides the packet of 10 pads at Rs 10, much lesser than the other branded options.
The scheme also sold 95 lakh strips of telmisartan, 82 lakh strips of domperidone and pantoprazole and 53 lakh metformin hydrochloride.
The central government on Monday announced that the PMBJP scheme, which sells generic medicines at 50 to 90 per cent cheaper rates than the market price of the branded drugs, has created a record by achieving sales of Rs 1000 crore in October 2024.
Ravi Dhadich, chief executive officer of the scheme, told News18 in an exclusive interview that the “PMBJP scheme is now the biggest pharmacy chain in India in terms of the number of retail outlets. The scheme is doing well and last month, it touched sales of Rs 200 crore. The sales of Rs 1,000 crore are cumulative until October 20, 2024, in this fiscal year 2024-25.”
He said that “in less than seven months, the scheme has achieved Rs 1,000 crore in sales as compared to the previous year when the same level of sales was achieved in nine months. On average, we are growing at 30-35 per cent per year with average monthly revenue of Rs 160-170 crore.”
The scheme now aims to achieve Rs 2,000 crore worth of sales in this financial year, he said.
The top performing outlet which generated sales of Rs 2.24 crore (from April to October 20) is in Ranchi followed by Dehradun (2.12 crore), Jammu (1.89 crore), Chandigarh (1.57 crore) and Patna (1.54 crore). Overall, the top performing state is Uttar Pradesh which churned a revenue of over Rs 158 crore (till October 20) followed by Kerala (Rs 134 crore), Karnataka (Rs 116 crore), Chattisgarh (94 crore) and Tamil Nadu (90.75 crore).
Scheme “over-achieving” targets, big expansion plans on cards
In the last decade, the number of Jan Aushadhi pharmacy outlets has increased by more than 170 times, now exceeding 14,000.
“We are focussing on opening more stores to cover the entire country with at least one Kendra (pharmacy outlet) for every 70,000 people,” said Dhadich, who is a DANICS officer. “We have opened 4500 kendras (or outlets) since November 2023 and this is five times the speed earlier when we used to open 1000 kendras per year.”
“The main target is to reach 25,000 kendras as early as possible. The focus is to ensure maximum medicines at these outlets,” he said.
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