To offer free mediclaim cover — Medicine Shoppe in pact with Oriental Insurance  ( August '31,2004, HBL)

IN a bid to boost its loyalty programmes, pharma retail company Medicine Shoppe India has tied up with Oriental Insurance Company to offer free mediclaim policy to customers

This initiative follows the success of Medicine Shoppe's first free personal accident insurance offer.

This agreement will have the insurance company extending a mediclaim policy worth Rs 5,000 for every purchase worth Rs 5,000 made from any of its Medicine Shoppe outlets across the country.

Addressing newspersons here, Mr Viraj Gandhi, Managing Director, Medicine Shoppe India, said, "We had issued policies worth Rs 16 crore of the personal accident insurance offer in the last 16 months, and we expect this mediclaim scheme would promote health insurance besides boosting our loyalty programmes."

"We are hopeful that this policy will increase awareness and sensitise more customers to the need of taking such policies for them and their families," said Dr V.N. Bhargava, Regional Manager, Oriental Insurance Companies, in a statement.

Medicine Shoppe is a pioneer in the concept of community pharmacists and offers novel services such as accident insurance, SMS reminders for medicine stocks and medical history of individual patients.

However, the company has deferred its plan to set up a centralised call centre for telemedicine pharmacy initiative in association with a third-party administrator. The concept was supposed to be launched this month.

"The pilot-project involving setting up a call centre in association with a health insurance has be deferred following some issues related to prescriptions. We hope to kick off this project by November," Mr Gandhi said.

The retail pharmacy chain has also lined up Rs 50 crore expansion programme to make it a 500-outlet retail chain by 2009, which will be funded the Medicine Shoppe franchisees.

"The company is looking at Maharashtra, Gujarat and Goa to provide the growth thrust. Of these, about 20 are planned in Gujarat, bulk in Maharashtra and some in Goa and other States," said Mr Gandhi.