Arjun Deshpande: The teenager who convinced Tata to invest in his startup

Eighteen-year-old Arjun Deshpande has been eagerly waiting for his class 12 results while the Covid19 lockdown continues in Mumbai. He loves football and reading. But he is not a regular teenager. He is the founder of a start-up that employs 55 people and has managed to catch the attention of Tata Group patriarch Ratan Tata. The industrialist has now invested in his pharmaceutical business venture Generic Aadhaar to provide affordable medicines to the masses. 

Deshpande, who completed his schooling from DAV Public School, Thane, was a globe trotter from a young age and because his mother was employed at a global pharmaceutical company, travelling to the US, Europe, and China along with visits to pharma plants were usual vacation plans. 

“In those countries, medicines are affordable with superior quality. India is the pharma manufacturing hub of the world and exports to these countries, but our people are not getting quality medicines at reasonable price. I wanted to develop a model to help Indians get quality and affordable medicines,” says Deshpande, who wanted to be a job creator and not a job seeker. 

After several weeks of brainstorming, Generic Aadhaar was born in 2019. It works on a simple business model where Deshpande and his team procure generic drugs directly from manufacturers that are WHO-GMP certified and provide them to the retailers, thereby cutting out the middlemen and delivering medicines to masses at a much lower cost. The medicines sold at Generic Aadhaar are sold at 20-30 per cent lesser than the market rate, claims the teenager. 

Generic Aadhaar was started with a seed capital of ~15 lakh, which Deshpande had borrowed then from his parents. Through his venture he began supporting single medical stores, 30 of them so far, which otherwise face competition from big brands and online pharmacies. He was also running several campaigns to create awareness about certified generic medicines among buyers. 

Earlier this year, Deshpande, hoping to get a response from Tata on his start-up model, wrote him an email. To his surprise, Tata already knew about the venture through his campaigns and he was called to his Mumbai office for a meeting. “During our meeting he said he wanted affordable and quality medicines to reach every Indian,” says the start-up founder. It took Deshpande four months and three meetings to seal a deal with Tata for his business. 

The Tata Group chairman emeritus has now invested an undisclosed amount in the company and has suggested the start-up to focus on delivering cancer drugs at reduced cost. “As happy as I am to support this venture, it has been a minority token investment. I have not purchased 50 per cent stake in the company,” Tata tweeted on Friday. 
 

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Deshpande says: “We will soon start offering cancer drugs at rates much lower than the market price. For this we have tied up with a drug manufacturer that has a plant in Baddi. We will be directly sourcing the medicines from them and deliver them to our pharma store partners.” The start-up is currently supplying diabetes and hypertension drugs to clients. 

Deshpande, who believes one should not let age come in between one’s goals, is focussing on adding 300-400 stores to its network in the next three to four months. “We will also partner with pharmacies on a franchisee-based model in the coming months and expand our reach to markets like Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, New Delhi, Goa, and Rajasthan,” he says. 

The start-up is tying up with universities to create awareness that certified generic medicines are as good as branded ones and cost much less. The team is in the process of developing an online model for which it will launch an app by July. Through this app, customers will be able to avail medicines at their doorstep within two hours of ordering, says Deshpande. These steps, feels Deshpande, will help the company reach the target of ~150-200 crore revenue from the current ~6 crore in the next two to three years. 

For now he will also be focussing on getting into a college to graduate before enrolling for an MBA programme for which he has already begun preparations.