India eHealth – COVID-19 Impact and Way forward

1. eHealth sector has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the COVID driven lockdown- with fastest growth in business vs BAU

Compared to other sectors like eCommerce and Foodtech, eHealth saw the biggest boost owing to steep growth in organic app downloads. Which ultimately also led to 45% GMV growth vs Jan driven by ePharma category.

2. Despite some drop-offs, we expect strong retention of eHealth users in 2020-allowing >3x growth in user base

Due to high repeat nature of the eHealth category especially in ePharma plus overall high consumer satisfaction, we see strong adoption growth playing out in 2020 for the sector despite dropoffs post lockdown.

3. Our bullishness on consumer retention stems from a strong net willingness to shift to eHealth post the pandemic

The decrease in offline spending on health services, will get re-distributed to enable online spend increase, as health services are generally essential. The decrease in offline spending on health services, will get re-distributed to enable online spend increase, as health services are generally essential.

4. Basis strong user base growth, we expect eHealth sales to grow nearly 4x in 2020

Drive by 3x growth in user base and likely increase in average spends per user especially in prescription drugs and consultations, we are very bullish that the eHealth market is on track to achieve ~300+% growth y-o-y in 2020.

5. Driven by COVID boost, we revised our eHealth estimates to reach ~$25 Bn GMV by FY 25

2020 is just the start of the eHealth boom story. We expect that this sector will become the ‘new normal’ post COVID and have accordingly revised upwards our FY25 forecasts as well- across all sub segments but more so in prescription drugs and eConsultations.