For a few days, some of the PharmEasy founders went into hiding. A competitor had filed a false police complaint. Arrest warrants followed. Their parents received threats, and some of the company's stores were vandalised. It is a strange scene for a business now known as a big healthtech name, but it comes from the founders' own telling in an Entrepreneur India profile.
The five of them, Dharmil Sheth, Dhaval Shah, Siddharth Shah, Hardik Dedhia and Harsh Parekh, grew up in Ghatkopar in Mumbai and have been friends since kindergarten. Dhaval trained as a doctor and then went to McKinsey. Siddharth developed the first online pharmacy idea during his MBA at IIM Ahmedabad and incorporated it as Dialhealth.com. Hardik left Carnegie Mellon to join him. Harsh quit Airtel. Dharmil was running another business, 91streets, when the group decided to pivot.
Siddharth developed the first online pharmacy idea during his MBA at IIM Ahmedabad and incorporated it as Dialhealth.com.
It did not work at first. Dialhealth stalled. A retail pharmacy chain that followed also failed. What they got from the failures was a lesson in the supply chain, and a wholesale distribution business that taught them how medicines move.
Money was the harder part. When no one outside would back them, their families stepped in, mortgaging homes and assets for about ₹21 Cr in total. Siddharth later said they 'didn't have the luxury of making mistakes.' A partner issued a term sheet at a ₹50 Cr valuation and withdrew after due diligence. Within six months a new investor came in at ₹150 Cr.
Then the rise: the unicorn status in 2021, the Medlife merger, and the purchase of 66.1% of Thyrocare for ₹4,546 Cr. At the peak, the company was valued at about $5.6 Bn. An IPO for ₹6,250 Cr was filed in November 2021 and withdrawn in August 2022 after markets turned. Founders and employees bought ₹45 Cr of shares from investors at market price.
The fall was steep. A $300M Goldman Sachs loan at 17-18% required fresh equity of ₹1,000 Cr by August 2023, which it missed. Ranjan Pai's family put in ₹1,300 Cr in a rights issue and ₹800 Cr in 2024. Valuation fell about 90% to roughly $456 Mn, and the founders stepped back, with Siddharth leaving the CEO's chair in August 2025.
Today the company is still losing money, ₹1,517 Cr in FY25, though 40% less than the year before, on revenue near ₹5,900 Cr, mostly from selling medicines to retailers.
Dharmil's reflection to Entrepreneur India is the one worth keeping: 'I would have wanted to fail faster.' The expensive thing in a startup is rarely the failure itself. It is the time spent before you admit it.