The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, though brutal & disruptive in several ways, was a blessing in disguise for the online healthcare industry. As ironic as this may sound, it's the harsh truth.
As consumers flocked to 1mg to order their healthcare essentials online, the exponential growth in traffic caused a tremendous rise in partnership requests from vendors, distributors, small & large businesses and the opportunity had never been this big before. We wanted to improve our discovery experience for 2 lines of business that saw tremendous growth - Pharmacy & Diagnostics.
My job was to work closely with product managers, category managers, and merchandising designers to:
History is testimony to the fact that it has always taken a major event or incident to cause changes in deep-rooted, rigid beliefs & habits of the masses. The Covid-19 pandemic was such a transformational event for the online healthcare industry in India.
All the skepticism and crushing regulations that were put in place to curb the growth of the online pharmacy and telemedicine industry till 2019, were quashed and revised when consumers, regulatory bodies, trade unions, policymakers & all relevant stakeholders realised that ethical, robust, and secure online businesses would be a positive enabler for this space rather than a threat, because groceries and healthcare are two of the most essential items needed by any human being anywhere, in any situation, as proven during the nationwide lockdowns imposed over several months.
Though the first 3 months were very difficult, as restrictions gradually started easing and we started figuring out ways to navigate the new normal, 1mg saw a heightened interest from consumers, investors and partners across the country.
There was unprecedented consumer traffic - so much that we had to expand & recalibrate our server capabilities. There was also tremendous interest from vendors, distributors, retailers, small businesses as well as behemoth brands to partner with us and sell their products on our platform.
To be honest, we had not expected this much growth in such a little time frame. We didn't have a robust category & merchandising team in place, our existing advertising inventory was not state-of-the-art, and our platforms were not modular or flexible enough to accommodate big-budget campaign requests.
In AY 2020, the brand was operating with an average user base of 163 million and revenue of close to $100 million. The growth witnessed was:
Clearly, the opportunity was tremendous and we had to move fast to make the most of it.
We wanted to achieve the following targets with the redesign: