Wellness Forever, a trusted and recognizable wellness brand in Western India, was started in 2008-2009 by three partners – Gulshan Bakhtiani, Mohan Chavan, and Ashraf Biran, who are all first-generation entrepreneurs with backgrounds in the pharmacy. 

Being experts in the pharmacy business, they thought why not come together and achieve their goals of serving customers better. While deciding on a brand name, they were clear to incorporate the word ‘Wellness’. They wanted to build a place that people don’t visit only when they fall sick but create a more curated experience for customers. A brand that is larger than life and caters to every need of the customer concerning health and wellness - is what they aim to achieve. These were the ethos that they kept in mind while building a brand. Its core offering is wellness, and it will remain the same. 

“Our success depends on our ability to establish effective advertising, marketing and promotional programs, including pricing strategies implemented in response to competitive pressures and to drive demand for our products, increase our customer base and increase our market share. We have always communicated our primary motive through our campaigns. We intend to provide the right medicine at the right time and every time,” said Ashraf Biran, Founder & Director, Wellness Forever Medicare.
 
“Our unique distinction stands in that we are 24x7 available for our customers. 98 percent of our stores are open day and night. We aim to increase our brand awareness and visibility through our multi-pronged marketing strategies, provide an authentic in-store and online experience for our core customers, and maintain a high level of customer service,” he further added.

The brand focuses on providing its customers a retail experience beyond purchasing medicines and necessities. It offers a wide assortment of merchandise comprising approximately 91,500 pharmaceutical and wellness products. Each of its stores features over 13,000 products per store, including fast-moving consumer goods, fast-moving health goods, nutraceuticals, and medical equipment, among other products, alongside over-the-counter and prescription medicines.

Technology: The Game Changer

Wellness Forever is backed by robust technological capabilities and IT-enabled, centralized logistics, fulfillment, and distribution infrastructure. In recent years, it has made significant investments in talent, technology, fulfillment capacity, infrastructure, and marketing to deliver on its ambitious future expansion plans. 

“We plan to accomplish customer acquisition, service, and delight by leveraging technology. Our logistics, fulfillment, and distribution infrastructure is tech-focused and supported by our fully integrated IT capabilities. We have an inventory management system that provides up-to-date product availability information, which allows us to efficiently handle large volumes of merchandise amidst the complexities of our business. It uses statistical methods and calculations to determine the time to purchase and replenish inventory at our various centers and stores,” he asserted.

“In 2013-14, when cloud technology was in its nascent stage, we started using it. For us, every stage is a learning stage. We learned this during the launch of our app during COVID-19. With the fear of stepping out, having an app became a necessity.  After two years of the pandemic, we have realized the customer preference, and we connect with them better. Hence, we are revamping our app completely, and it shall be up this month,” he further added.

Matching Changing Consumer Expectations

Post COVID-19, the wellness segment has exploded. The Asia Pacific, including, India is one of the focus regions in the nutraceuticals and clean products category. People are becoming more conscious of health. There is a rise in demand for processed food. It is driving food and beverage players to improve the nutritional content of their products, thereby leading to new growth avenues. The growing importance of nutraceutical categories is linked to the increasing prevalence of lifestyle diseases and people seeking preventive healthcare. The lack of time and inability to adhere to a nutritionally balanced diet has resulted in multiple deficiencies. In addition, there is an increased demand for nutraceuticals as compensation for overall health and wellbeing. There is also a growing demand for functional foods, which combine the benefit of food and nutrients.

“Matching these trends and catering to the changing consumer needs, Wellness Forever stores offer a wide range of nutraceuticals and herbceuticals. We have also recently launched ‘Subject Matter Experts’ that provide end-to-end solutions to our customers. For example, if a woman is interested in a nutrition product to improve skin and hair health - we connect her with our experts, who understand the problem and provide a solution with the best-suited product. This proactiveness is what we have mastered with our brands,” he explained.

Offering Omnichannel Experience

Brick-and-mortar retail combined with the hyperlocal model is becoming dominant and creating an omnichannel umbrella in the pharmacy segment. Businesses operating on this approach are emerging as critical players in the pharmacy retail market. These outlets have digital hyperlocal enablement focusing on providing a seamless customer experience, whether the client is shopping online from an internet-enabled device, tele-calling, or visiting a physical store. Such a mechanism allows faster delivery of products to customers against the centralized distribution centers. The target delivery time through an omnichannel platform can be as low as 2-6 hours. On the other hand, it is 12-48 hours through a traditional distribution model undertaken by an online-only player.

“Our business is 92 percent offline/walk-ins and 8 percent online. Our omnichannel retail platform assists in optimizing the business through channel diversification and comprehensive integration of data and systems across the channels to have a seamless experience, allowing for higher customer retention and higher wallet share.  We have a robust infrastructure and integration of supply chain, logistics, warehousing, technology, and inventory across the channels. It enables our marketing to be more efficient - with offers relative to a specific consumer based on purchase patterns, social network affinities, website visits, and loyalty programs,” he stated.

“We want to provide a unified experience to all customers across our platforms. The goal we aim to achieve is in progress. We want to offer a seamless and delightful experience to our customers. We train our on-ground staff on how to communicate with the buyers. Additionally, we have 250+ call center staff for customer support,” he further added.

Future Plans

The brand has been growing at a CAGR of 15-20 percent year on year. It generates a significant 40 percent revenue share from non-medicine products like premium wellness products. Sales of premium wellness products (products featuring higher gross margins than 30 percent) represent 10.70 percent, 12.20 percent, and 16.32 percent, respectively, of the brand’s revenue from operations for the FY 2019, FY 2020, and FY 2021. 

“Our target customer demographics primarily include India’s middle, and upper-middle-income customers, who exhibit higher per sale ticket costs and have shown a growing demand for higher-quality, premium wellness products. The brand also offers a hyperlocal, omnichannel retail experience extending beyond the traditional drugstore model. The new-age stores provide a relatively quicker base for fulfilling omnichannel orders as compared to a centralized distribution center. The brand has also developed a reliable omnichannel retail mechanism, which offers 2- 6 hours of delivery. Finally, non-store sales accounted for 11-12 percent of overall retail revenue for the company in FY2021,” he asserted.

At present, Wellness Forever is the third-largest pharmacy retail chain in India in terms of revenue from operations and the number of stores. It has a leading position in Western India in terms of total revenues. Currently, it has 221 company-operated stores and 2 franchised stores as of March 31, 2021. The average size of the ‘Wellness Forever’ store is 900 square feet of retail floor space. It has the largest retail store featuring 2,300 square feet of retail floor space against the average of 250 -500 square feet stores in the modern retail pharmacy segment. The stores are serviced by two distribution centers, a 1, 00,000 square feet central warehouse in Bhiwandi, and one dark store/fulfillment center catering to the omnichannel business. 

“Our expansion strategy involves primarily strengthening our position in places where we are already present and increasing our geographic presence by entering new, neighboring regions in the Western belt of the country. Our current business plans contemplate utilizing part of the offer proceeds for our retail network expansion over the fiscal year 2022 to the fiscal year 2024. Additionally, we are aggressively planning for a franchising model to open 105 new stores of the franchise and 70 company-owned stores in the current fiscal year,” he concluded.