Liki24: building the EU's largest online pharmacy

This interview was conducted and transcribed by Timothy Motte.

Biography

Anton Avrynskyi is the co-founder of Liki24, an online marketplace for pharmaceuticals, lab tests and personal care products. Launched in Ukraine, the platform is now active in 8 other European countries.

Liki24 has raised $10M since its founding. It has over 2,5M customers and 13,000 pharmacies onboarded.

How did Liki24 originate?

Back in 2012, my newborn daughter got sick and needed five different medicines. I hopscotched between pharmacies, since none of them had the five medicines I needed. I realized that there were abnormal price differences between these pharmacies, for the same products.

I searched for online pharmacies but results were disappointing. They showed prices and availability but you couldn’t order anything. In Ukraine, the regulation around ordering medicine was strict: you either had to pick it up or send someone to pick it up. Technically, the pharmacy couldn’t deliver it to you.

Liki24 is compliant because when someone orders a medicine, we dispatch someone to pick it up for them: the pharmacy isn’t technically delivering it.

What are the reasons for those price differences?

There are a couple.

First, there are different types of pharmacies: some are low-cost, some are high-end… That explains part of it.

Second, pharmacies push to sell almost expired products. To do so, they reduce prices. A pharmacy that has just received the shipment for the same product doesn’t have any incentive to make it cheaper.

Third and most important, the relationship between each pharmacy and pharmaceutical company is unique. Pharma companies give pharmacies discounts depending on sales volume. Different pharmacies have different arrangements, leading to price differences.

Why does Liki24 make medicine cheaper?

We aggregate thousands of pharmacies on a single marketplace. As stated, the price for similar products differs between pharmacies. What we do is present the customer with the cheapest option possible. Then, we enable them to order it and get it delivered to their door.

We’re cross-border now, so we can offer more optionality. An Italian customer can order medicine from a Romanian pharmacy, if it’s cheaper. Similarly, a Romanian customer can order a medicine from an Italian pharmacy (or from another country) if it isn’t available locally.

We’re similar to Google Maps: there are different itineraries and prices for the same medicine. You can order medicine from outside the country for cheaper, but it’ll take 3 days to arrive. Or you can order medicine locally for a bit more money, but it’ll arrive instantly. We want customers to have options, because use cases are unique.

If we enable pharmacies to sell more, they should get more discounts from pharma companies. Those discounts can be passed down to customers in the form of lower prices.

You briefly touched upon regulation. Which barriers do you run into?

As a preface, Covid changed everything. The healthcare industry’s regulatory paradigm has shifted and that includes medicine delivery. The European Union (EU) has recently recognized online pharmacy platforms as concrete actors in the healthcare space.

As for our compliance, the main point is that we don’t sell medicine. We don’t have a warehouse. We are a marketplace that connects customers and pharmacies. We also happen to take care of the delivery logistics once a customer orders something from a pharmacy.

There are more restrictions on Rx products (prescriptions) but there are ways to make it work as well. It is possible to order Rx products online only in countries where electronic prescription is officially implemented. The list of such countries is expanding.

We’ve built an encrypted communication channel for the client to transfer their prescription to the pharmacy. From there, the pharmacy can confirm the client’s prescription and sell them the product.

What other services do you offer pharmacies?