Technology

Why investors just bet $85M on this Indian company’s generic drug strategy

With over 400 million chronic patients, India is one of the world’s largest medicine markets. But while most e-pharmacies chase speed, affordability remains the real challenge. Truemeds took a different route: helping patients switch to lower-cost substitutes, a bet now paying off with new funding at about four times its previous valuation.

The six-year-old startup has raised $85 million in a new round that includes $65 million in primary and $20 million in secondary funding led by Accel, along with participation from Peak XV Partners. TechCrunch first reported on Accel’s talks to back Truemeds last year. Existing investors WestBridge Capital and InfoEdge Ventures, also participated.

The fresh round has boosted Truemeds’ valuation to over $400 million, up from the $110 million in its last round two years ago.

Founded in 2019, Truemeds entered the market at a time when India’s online pharmacy space was already crowded with major players offering steep discounts on branded generics. But some of those companies struggled to sustain early momentum — Prosus Ventures-backed PharmEasy, for instance, saw its valuation drop from a peak of $5.6 billion to under $600 million, while 1mg was acquired by Tata Digital, part of the Tata Group. Instead of competing head-on, Truemeds’ founders chose to focus on a relatively niche segment: generic medicines.

“There is no way to educate the user that you can have more affordable options if you can’t afford these drugs,” said Truemeds co-founder Akshat Nayyar (pictured above, left) in an interview. “That is where we felt that nobody in the value chain was working towards that, and we can bridge that gap.”

The Mumbai-based outfit recommends generic alternatives to consumers for the branded medicines they need. This eventually helps consumers save money, as generic drugs are typically more affordable than their branded versions due to cost efficiencies in their development process.

Truemeds says its differentiated approach has paid off, with revenue growing over 66% year-over-year to ₹5 billion ($57 million) in the last financial year. The startup says it retains more than 50% of its revenue after 12 months and now serves an average of 500,000 customers each month, with a total of 3 million customers to date. Moreover, it says it now serves over 20,000 postal codes across the country, with more than 75% of its customers coming from tier-2 cities and beyond.

Techcrunch event

San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025

However, educating customers about alternatives to their prescribed medicines — and convincing them to switch from branded drugs to generics — remains a challenge.

“Because you get anchored to your prescribed brand’s price, and when you suddenly see a lower price, you want to know why it is low,” Nayyar told TechCrunch.

Increasing discounts while competitors cut back

While today’s e-pharmacies chase speed over savings, the sector’s early playbook was different. Online pharmacies in India used to offer discounts of up to 25% to attract customers. But Nayyar said this dropped to 20% and then 15% — the new average — as most burned cash to acquire new customers and pivoted to faster delivery as their main differentiator.

Truemeds has gone in the opposite direction, increasing its average discounts from 29% to 32% in the last 12 months. For an average user who switches brands on the platform, savings reach 47% on their medicine, says the company.

This comes from Truemeds’ deep procurement relationships with pharma companies, where the startup uses its technology to give manufacturers better demand visibility, helping them plan production more efficiently for upcoming quarters, he said.

The startup also relies on its own logistics in some of the major cities it operates in and uses low-cost logistics partners for the rest.

“We believe that our four-hour delivery model is more than sufficient from a chronic patient’s perspective,” said Nayyar. “You’re able to do more planned purchases that way, but we want to do it in the most efficient manner, and pass more and more discounts to the end user rather than [focus on] the fastest delivery for that matter.”

Next up: AI-powered customization and doorstep diagnostics

As Truemeds needs to convince customers to choose generics over branded medicines, it goes through deeper consultations with them. It already conducts 10-12 million consultations per year. The startup has developed an algorithm over the years that looks at various parameters to precisely suggest alternatives to the branded drugs a customer demands. It considers nuances such as whether the medicine is sugar-coated if it is for a young patient, where it is manufactured, and whether the plant is GMP-certified, among others. The startup also has a chatbot to address some user queries quickly.

Much more is on the roadmap. The company plans to develop an AI-based system that customizes conversations based on customers’ behavior and previous interactions with generic alternatives. It’s also opening a Bengaluru office while dedicating at least 20% of its capital to engineering and product development.

Beyond medicines, Truemeds is plotting to enter diagnostics through partnerships with national pathology labs, planning to pilot lab testing services in some tier-2 cities in the next three to four months.

“The primary mission remains the same, which is making healthcare affordable for the end user,” the co-founder said. “It started with medicines. Now that the model is getting established, we are going to keep scaling that. Simultaneously, we also want to see if we can do something similar on the diagnostics front, where we can be the lowest cost provider of at least the most common tests.”

The startup also plans to increase its fulfillment center count by 300% — from 19 currently — over the next 12 months, aiming to deepen its presence in existing markets.

Before this round, Truemeds raised $50 million and still has 30–35% of that capital in the bank, Nayyar said.

The startup has a workforce of 2,800 people, with 250 based in its Mumbai office.

Technology

Pintarnya raises $16.7M to power jobs and financial services in Indonesia

Pintarnya, an Indonesian employment platform that goes beyond job matching by offering financial services along with full-time and side-gig opportunities, said it has raised a $16.7 million Series A round.

The funding was led by Square Peg with participation from existing investors Vertex Venture Southeast Asia & India and East Ventures.

Ghirish Pokardas, Nelly Nurmalasari, and Henry Hendrawan founded Pintarnya in 2022 to tackle two of the biggest challenges Indonesians face daily: earning enough and borrowing responsibly.

“Traditionally, mass workers in Indonesia find jobs offline through job fairs or word of mouth, with employers buried in paper applications and candidates rarely hearing back. For borrowing, their options are often limited to family/friend or predatory lenders with harsh collection practices,” Henry Hendrawan, co-founder of Pintarnya, told TechCrunch. “We digitize job matching with AI to make hiring faster and we provide workers with safer, healthier lending options — designed around what they can reasonably afford, rather than pushing them deeper into debt.”

Around 59% of Indonesia’s 150 million workforce is employed in the informal sector, highlighting the difficulties these workers encounter in accessing formal financial services because they lack verifiable income and official employment documentation.

Pintarnya tackles this challenge by partnering with asset-backed lenders to offer secured loans, using collateral such as gold, electronics, or vehicles, Hendrawan added.

Since its seed funding in 2022, the platform currently serves over 10 million job seeker users and 40,000 employers nationwide. Its revenue has increased almost fivefold year-over-year and expects to reach break-even by the end of the year, Hendrawn noted. Pintarnya primarily serves users aged 21 to 40, most of whom have a high school education or a diploma below university level. The startup aims to focus on this underserved segment, given the large population of blue-collar and informal workers in Indonesia.

Techcrunch event

San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025

“Through the journey of building employment services, we discovered that our users needed more than just jobs — they needed access to financial services that traditional banks couldn’t provide,” said Hendrawan. “We digitize job matching with AI to make hiring faster and we provide workers with safer, healthier lending options — designed around what they can reasonably afford, rather than pushing them deeper into debt.”

image credits: Pintarnya (Founders of Pintarnya Ghirish Pokardas, Nelly Nurmalasari, and Henry Hendrawan)

While Indonesia already has job platforms like JobStreet, Kalibrr, and Glints, these primarily cater to white-collar roles, which represent only a small portion of the workforce, according to Hendrawan. Pintarnya’s platform is designed specifically for blue-collar workers, offering tailored experiences such as quick-apply options for walk-in interviews, affordable e-learning on relevant skills, in-app opportunities for supplemental income, and seamless connections to financial services like loans.

The same trend is evident in Indonesia’s fintech sector, which similarly caters to white-collar or upper-middle-class consumers. Conventional credit scoring models for loans, which rely on steady monthly income and bank account activity, often leave blue-collar workers overlooked by existing fintech providers, Hendrawan explained.

When asked about which fintech services are most in demand, Hendrawan mentioned, “Given their employment status, lending is the most in-demand financial service for Pintarnya’s users today. We are planning to ‘graduate’ them to micro-savings and investments down the road through innovative products with our partners.”

The new funding will enable Pintarnya to strengthen its platform technology and broaden its financial service offerings through strategic partnerships. With most Indonesian workers employed in blue-collar and informal sectors, the co-founders see substantial growth opportunities in the local market. Leveraging their extensive experience in managing businesses across Southeast Asia, they are also open to exploring regional expansion when the timing is right.

“Our vision is for Pintarnya to be the everyday companion that empowers Indonesians to not only make ends meet today, but also plan, grow, and upgrade their lives tomorrow … In five years, we see Pintarnya as the go-to super app for Indonesia’s workers, not just for earning income, but as a trusted partner throughout their life journey,” Hendrawan said. “We want to be the first stop when someone is looking for work, a place that helps them upgrade their skills, and a reliable guide as they make financial decisions.”

Technology

OpenAI warns against SPVs and other ‘unauthorized’ investments

In a new blog post, OpenAI warns against “unauthorized opportunities to gain exposure to OpenAI through a variety of means,” including special purpose vehicles, known as SPVs.

“We urge you to be careful if you are contacted by a firm that purports to have access to OpenAI, including through the sale of an SPV interest with exposure to OpenAI equity,” the company writes. The blog post acknowledges that “not every offer of OpenAI equity […] is problematic” but says firms may be “attempting to circumvent our transfer restrictions.”

“If so, the sale will not be recognized and carry no economic value to you,” OpenAI says.

Investors have increasingly used SPVs (which pool money for one-off investments) as a way to buy into hot AI startups, prompting other VCs to criticize them as a vehicle for “tourist chumps.”

Business Insider reports that OpenAI isn’t the only major AI company looking to crack down on SPVs, with Anthropic reportedly telling Menlo Ventures it must use its own capital, not an SPV, to invest in an upcoming round.

Technology

Meta partners with Midjourney on AI image and video models

Meta is partnering with Midjourney to license the startup’s AI image and video generation technology, Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang announced Friday in a post on Threads. Wang says Meta’s research teams will collaborate with Midjourney to bring its technology into future AI models and products.

“To ensure Meta is able to deliver the best possible products for people it will require taking an all-of-the-above approach,” Wang said. “This means world-class talent, ambitious compute roadmap, and working with the best players across the industry.”

The Midjourney partnership could help Meta develop products that compete with industry-leading AI image and video models, such as OpenAI’s Sora, Black Forest Lab’s Flux, and Google’s Veo. Last year, Meta rolled out its own AI image generation tool, Imagine, into several of its products, including Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. Meta also has an AI video generation tool, Movie Gen, that allows users to create videos from prompts.

The licensing agreement with Midjourney marks Meta’s latest deal to get ahead in the AI race. Earlier this year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on a hiring spree for AI talent, offering some researchers compensation packages worth upwards of $100 million. The social media giant also invested $14 billion in Scale AI, and acquired the AI voice startup Play AI.

Meta has held talks with several other leading AI labs about other acquisitions, and Zuckerberg even spoke with Elon Musk about joining his $97 billion takeover bid of OpenAI (Meta ultimately did not join the offer, and OpenAI denied Musk’s bid).

While the terms of Meta’s deal with Midjourney remain unknown, the startup’s CEO, David Holz, said in a post on X that his company remains independent with no investors; Midjourney is one of the few leading AI model developers that has never taken on outside funding. At one point, Meta talked with Midjourney about acquiring the startup, according to Upstarts Media.

Midjourney was founded in 2022 and quickly became a leader in the AI image generation space for its realistic, unique style. By 2023, the startup was reportedly on pace to generate $200 million in revenue. The startup sells subscriptions starting at $10 per month. It offers pricier tiers, which offer more AI image generations, that cost as much as $120 per month. In June, the startup released its first AI video model, V1.

Techcrunch event

San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025

Meta’s partnership with Midjourney comes just two months after the startup was sued by Disney and Universal, alleging that it trained AI image models on copyrighted works. Several AI model developers — including Meta — face similar allegations from copyright holders, however, recent court cases pertaining to AI training data have sided with tech companies.

Got a sensitive tip or confidential documents? We’re reporting on the inner workings of the AI industry — from the companies shaping its future to the people impacted by their decisions. Reach out to Rebecca Bellan at [email protected] and Maxwell Zeff at [email protected]. For secure communication, you can contact us via Signal at @rebeccabellan.491 and @mzeff.88.

We’re always looking to evolve, and by providing some insight into your perspective and feedback into TechCrunch and our coverage and events, you can help us! Fill out this survey to let us know how we’re doing and get the chance to win a prize in return!