Healthcare delivery · Quick commerce pharmacy
Farmako Healthcare
A Gurugram startup that pivoted from a digital health records app to 30 minute medicine delivery, now running pharmacies in Gurugram and Moradabad while it works toward a Series A round its founders described as in progress back in 2024.
A shoulder injury and a hunch
Aman Bhandula hurt his shoulder playing squash at IIT Roorkee. A surgeon treated it, but the pain did not ease until Bhandula mentioned an older injury to the same shoulder. Once the doctor knew the history, the prescription changed and the injury healed fast. That gap, a doctor working without a patient's past records, is the story Bhandula has told reporters as the reason he, Kaishu Sahu and Nikhil Kumar started building a health record system while still students.
The three had joined IIT Roorkee in 2016, Bhandula in geological engineering and Sahu and Kumar in biological technology. They sketched the idea with roommates and doctors, set it aside for summer internships in 2019, then returned to it. Bhandula's internship placed him in Bengaluru, staying with a Razorpay cofounder, watching people around him build startups from their rooms. He came back and kept building the health records app instead of returning to a normal semester.
The problem it first tried to solve
India's healthcare system runs on paper. Patients carry their own prescriptions and lab reports from doctor to doctor, and there is no shared record that follows a person between a clinic, a lab and a pharmacy. Farmako's original product, called Farmako Health ID, tried to fix that by giving doctors and diagnostic labs a shared system to store patient records, which the company says grew to more than 3 million records. In 2022 the Indian government launched its own version of the idea, the ABHA Health ID under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, and Farmako became an early official partner rather than a competitor to it.
That left an opening. Bhandula has argued that India's retail pharmacy market, which he puts above 25 billion dollars, is still served mostly by small local shops rather than the centralized warehouses most e-pharmacies use, and that existing online pharmacies compete mainly on discounts rather than speed.
Y Combinator and the pivot
The founders applied to Y Combinator once the pandemic shut down campus, and were accepted into the Summer 2020 batch with an initial check. Bhandula has said the money gave him a reason to leave IIT Roorkee outright rather than split time between classes and the company; Sahu and Kumar, in a four year program, finished coursework but skipped placements to stay on the startup full time.
The delivery business did not start as a plan. In a Gurugram experiment, Farmako partnered with local pharmacies and with Swiggy Genie, the delivery arm of Swiggy, to test 30 minute drop offs. Demand was strong enough that the company committed to it in March 2023, building its own pharmacies and delivery team instead of leaning on a partner courier. By August 2024 it told reporters it was running three pharmacies, in Delhi, Gurugram and Moradabad, completing more than 16,000 deliveries a month with an annual gross order value above 1 million dollars.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate registration | Farmako Healthcare Private Limited, CIN U85100UP2019PTC120231, incorporated Aug 16, 2019 in Uttar Pradesh. Authorized capital INR 1 lac, paid up capital INR 10,000. Registered address is a residential address in Moradabad. | Public record |
| Founding year | The company and Y Combinator both list 2020 as the founding year. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs record shows incorporation in August 2019, and press coverage has also described the company as founded in 2019. | Differs from record |
| Directors of record | The MCA filing lists two directors, Aman Bhandula and Kaishu Sahu, each holding the role about seven years per Tofler. Nikhil Kumar, publicly credited as a cofounder and CIO, does not appear as an MCA director in the record checked. | Public record |
| Drug license | The company's website states it “holds the drug license provided by the drug control authorities to sell medicines directly to its customers.” No license number or state filing was found to verify this independently. | Company-stated |
| Delhi service | August 2024 press describes Farmako operating 24/7 in New Delhi, Gurugram and Moradabad. The company's website lists only Gurgaon and Moradabad as serviceable and says it is “launching soon” in parts of New Delhi. Its listed GST registrations cover only Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, not Delhi. | Differs from company site |
| Total funding raised | Aggregators disagree. Inc42 lists total funding just over 1.6 million dollars across three rounds, as of 2025. Tracxn lists 3.1 million dollars across three rounds, including a June 2025 round with an amount it withholds. | Aggregators disagree |
| FY25 revenue | Inc42 reports revenue of 13.5 crore rupees, roughly 1.6 million dollars, for the year to March 2025, up 26.5 percent from 10.7 crore the year before, sourced from filed statutory financials. | Independent reporting |
| US entity | Tracxn lists a second, US-based entity, Farmako, Inc., incorporated May 2020, with two employees per a 2020 snapshot. No SEC Form D or EDGAR filing for a Farmako entity was found in this review. | Not found |
| Forbes recognition | Bhandula appears on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia, Healthcare and Science, 2022 list. The Forbes profile describes Farmako as a health records platform serving over 5 million patients through more than 2,000 partner labs, and reports 1.5 million dollars in seed funding from Backend Capital, HOF Capital, Soma Capital and Y Combinator. | Independent record |
Read plainly: the record confirms Farmako as a registered Indian company with two named directors and shows real, if modest, filed revenue growth. Where it runs thin is the operational story, the Delhi rollout, the drug license, the exact funding total and the US entity, none of which line up cleanly with the company's own website or independent aggregators.
What to watch
- Whether 24/7 Delhi service is actually live, given the gap between the August 2024 press coverage and the company's own site listing Delhi as not yet launched.
- Whether the Series A founders told YourStory they were in talks to close in 2024 has closed. Inc42 still listed the company at Pre-Series A stage as of its most recent update.
- A published drug license number or state pharmacy registration that would independently confirm the company's licensed pharmacy claim.
- Any SEC filing activity for Farmako, Inc., the US entity named in aggregator data, including a Form D that has not yet appeared.
In their words
“The doctor then asked about the medical history and I recalled about an old injury on the same shoulder. That's when different medicines were incorporated into my treatment and the injury healed very quickly. The experience stayed with me and I started thinking about the importance of medical histories.”
Aman Bhandula, founder and CEO, to The Indian Express, Dec 2021 · Interview
“We got selected and received a seed fund of $150,000. I realized that I will be working on my startup for the next five years and had no reason to not pursue it full-time.”
Aman Bhandula, to The Indian Express, Dec 2021 · Interview
“When we started Farmako, we used to think that we would first solve the problem of health records in India. Once we build this, we will launch services like quick medicine delivery, and fast diagnostics. We were looking to build something that makes it easy for anyone to add their health records to Farmako.”
Aman Bhandula, to YourStory, Aug 2024 · Independent
“We decided that it would be better to partner with the government on our long-term EMR vision and we can straightaway launch services like quick medicine delivery. Also when we were building the EMR SaaS, we got a lot of requests from users for medicine delivery. Hence, we pivoted.”
Aman Bhandula, to YourStory, Aug 2024 · Independent
“We believe retail pharmacy is a huge market ($25 billion+) in India, and the current e-pharmacies run on the central warehouse, outdated software stack, and discount-driven models. In India, local brick-and-mortar pharmacies serve more than 90% of the market. We believe that we can provide a better value proposition to users with our quick delivery and personalised app, especially in Tier I cities in India.”
Aman Bhandula, to YourStory, Aug 2024 · Independent
“I believe that the work we are doing at farmako is saving thousands of lives. Digital Health records will be game-changing for countries like India where we don't have a great healthcare infrastructure and we don't have enough doctors either. The market is huge, the work is challenging and it does a great impact on people's lives directly.”
Aman Bhandula, Y Combinator company page · Company-stated
“Farmako is delivering medicines to you in just 30 minutes. We are the fastest medicine delivery service in India (maybe also in the world).”
Farmako website, FAQ section · Company-stated
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordFarmako Healthcare Private Limited, company record, CIN U85100UP2019PTC120231
- Public recordFarmako legal entities and funding summary
- Independent reportingFarmako company profile, funding and FY25 revenue
- IndependentY Combinator-backed healthtech startup Farmako raises $1.6M for expansion
- IndependentIIT Dropout Series: UP boy drops out of India's oldest engineering college to build digital health record system
- Independent recordFarmako profile, Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia, Healthcare and Science 2022
- IndependentY Combinator-backed Healthtech Startup Farmako Raises $1.6 Mn
- IndependentFarmako Raises USD 1.6M in Funding
- IndependentFarmako Bags $1.6 Mn Investment for Medicine Delivery Service in Delhi
- IndependentFarmako, a Y Combinator-Backed Healthtech Startup, Raises $1.6 Million to Expand Medicine Delivery Operations
- CompanyFarmako Healthcare company page
- CompanyFarmako website, home and FAQ pages
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
