Medicines and surgical items

The trade

How this trade really works

From the factory to the customer, each person in the chain wants something different. Most of what goes wrong comes from the gaps between them.

The company

Makes the medicine or gets it made, fixes the price list and the schemes, and sends medical representatives to doctors. It wants doctors to write its brand names, and it wants stock out of its depots before the year closes.

The company depot

Each state usually has a depot run by an agent of the company. It holds stock, bills it to stockists and handles the paperwork for expiry returns. It wants clean dispatches and few quarrels.

The stockist

The distributor who holds many companies' medicines and supplies chemists every day, on credit. He wants good schemes, quick credit notes for expired goods, and no box that will die on his racks.

The chemist

Keeps what the doctors around him write. He orders small and often, sometimes in the morning and again in the evening. He wants fast supply, easy return of expired strips and a fair margin.

The doctor

Never buys from you, yet decides everything. When a doctor changes the brand he writes, the chemist below his clinic changes his order the same week.

The hospital and nursing home

Buys through its own pharmacy, often at a fixed rate agreed for the year. It orders large, asks for particular items, and pays late.

The patient

Carries the slip from the doctor to the counter. If your brand is not there, he takes what the chemist hands him and may never see your name again.

The prescription sells. The scheme only moves boxes.

A free-goods scheme, where the stockist gets some boxes free with a larger order, fills his godown. It does not make a single extra patient walk in. If the doctors in that town are not writing your brand, the free boxes sit on his racks until their date comes near. Then they come back to you as expiry.

Expiry always comes home

The chemist sends expired strips back to the stockist. The stockist collects them for months and sends them to your depot when he can. Your credit note reaches him much later, and often for less than he paid. So a careful stockist protects himself. He stops keeping your slow items. Then those items vanish from the shops, and your field team thinks the doctors stopped writing.

Seasons decide the rush

When the rains come, fevers and stomach infections rise, and fever medicines, rehydration salts and antibiotics run short. Winter brings coughs, cold syrups and breathing trouble. Summer brings skin infections and loose motions. Stock that reaches the stockist after the rush has passed sits there until the same season next year. By then, much of its life is gone.

The year-end push hides the truth

Before the financial year closes, targets are met by loading stockists with schemes. The depot looks empty and the sales report looks proud. For the next few months those stockists order almost nothing. The company calls it a slow start to the year. It was the same goods, sold early, still waiting for patients.

Out of stock means a lost patient

When your brand is missing, the chemist gives another company's medicine with the same salt. For a fever, you lose one sale. For a patient on blood pressure or sugar medicines, you lose him for months, because he now asks for the other name. The stockist who ran short of you did not mean harm. He just did not know which of your items were about to finish.

The field report is a promise, not a sale

Your medical representative writes that a doctor agreed to prescribe a new brand. A promise in the clinic is not a strip sold at the counter. The only proof is what the stockists near that doctor actually billed in the following weeks. Most companies never put the visit and the sale side by side for the same town.

Hospital supply plays by its own rules

A stockist who supplies a hospital or a large nursing home keeps big quantities of injections, drips, gloves, syringes, dressings and surgical items. The order is lumpy and the payment is slow. When that order stops, stock built for it sits in his godown and he asks you to take it back.

Where the money quietly goes

What you cannot see today, and what it costs you

What each stockist really sold

You know what you billed to him. You do not know how much of it went out to chemists this month and how much is still in his cartons. So you keep sending more to the stockist who shouts loudest, not to the one whose shelves are empty.

Expiry you only learn about when it returns

Today you find out that a lot of syrup did not sell when the returns land at your depot. By then it is a loss you cannot fix. The goods had been lying unsold for most of their life, and nobody told you while there was still time to move them to a town where they would sell.

Which towns answer your doctor visits

Your field team visits doctors across the region. Some towns pick up a new brand quickly. Others never do. Without stockist sales by town, you cannot tell which visits paid and which only cost fuel and samples.

Who is short of your fast items

A stockist can be full of your slow ointment and empty of your fast antibiotic at the same time. Chemists then buy the antibiotic from another company. You see a healthy stock figure for that stockist and never notice the gap.

What your schemes really cost

Every free box is a cost. When it sells, the cost was worth it. When it sits and then returns as expiry, you paid for it once as a free good and again as a credit note. Few companies can say which schemes, in which towns, moved medicine to patients and which only moved it to godowns.

A season, the way it usually goes

The story you already know

A medicine company in Baddi makes antibiotics, cough syrups, fever tablets and a small range of ointments. Most of its sales are in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. In the spring, the owner looks at last year's rains and tells his team to stock up early. Fever and stomach medicines go out to stockists in Gorakhpur, Patna and Darbhanga with a generous scheme.

The rains come late that year. In Gorakhpur, the stockist had taken a large load for the scheme, and his racks are full. In Darbhanga the fevers start early and the stockist there runs out of the company's fever tablets in the first week. Chemists switch to another brand. The company's area manager hears about it only when a chemist complains to the medical representative, long after the rush began.

Winter comes, and the cough syrup scheme goes out. Then, in spring, the returns start. Fever tablets from Gorakhpur, syrup from Patna, ointment that nobody asked for. The owner signs credit notes and asks his sales head why the stockists took so much. The sales head says the stockists wanted the scheme. Both are right. Nobody had seen the goods sitting while there was still time to do something.

What you can now decide

Decisions you could not make before

Send season stock where the season has started

When fever medicines start moving fast at the stockists in one district, you see it within days. You send the next lot there, not to the town whose racks are still full. The rush is caught while it is happening, not read about later in returns.

Move slow stock before it is too late

A syrup that has been sitting with one stockist for months will not sell in time there. Another stockist a few hours away is moving the same syrup well. You can arrange for the goods to pass from one to the other while they still have life. Move it, do not make it. Same goods, no new cost, and no credit note later.

Give schemes where patients are buying

Run the free-goods scheme for stockists whose chemists are actually selling your brand. Hold it back where stock is already lying. The scheme then helps the stockist who needs goods, instead of filling the godown of the one who does not.

Check the field team against the counter

Put the doctor visits beside the stockist sales in the same town. When a new brand is picking up in one district and not in another, you know where the medical representatives are getting through and where the effort needs to change.

Stop making what nobody writes

Some pack sizes and some strengths sit everywhere. You can see this across all your stockists at once. Make less of them, or stop, instead of finding out from a pile of expiry returns.

Keep chronic medicines from running out

For blood pressure, sugar and thyroid medicines, a gap at the stockist loses patients for months. When stock of these items starts falling with a stockist, you see it and send more before the chemist has to hand over another brand.

Plan for returns before they arrive

Stock that has been lying a long time with a stockist is next season's expiry claim. You can see the size of that risk now, stockist by stockist, and act on it, instead of meeting it as a surprise at the depot.

Where you get ahead

Where your competitor keeps losing

You catch the season first

Most companies learn about a fever outbreak from their competitors' sales. You see your own medicines moving faster in a district within days, and your next dispatch goes there while others are still reading last month's report.

Stockists trust you more

A stockist who knows you will help move slow goods before they expire is far less afraid of keeping your full range. Your slow items stay in the market, and your name stays on the chemist's shelf.

Your expiry losses shrink

Goods that are moved while they still have life never come back as a credit note. Over a season, that is money you no longer give away, and your competitor still does.

Your field team works on facts

Your medical representatives go where the counter tells them to go. Their effort is spent on towns where doctors are listening, not spread evenly across a region out of habit.

The same season, with Vyavora

The story, told again

Same company, same Baddi factory, next year. Its stockists in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar now bill on their own Vyavora, which the company pays for. The company's price list sits inside each of them and changes the moment the company changes it. Stockists order against it and pay online.

Early in the rains, the owner opens his screen one morning and sees fever tablets moving far faster than usual at the stockist in Darbhanga. Gorakhpur is still slow. He sends the next truck to Darbhanga and holds the Gorakhpur scheme for a few weeks. The Darbhanga stockist never runs dry. When Gorakhpur finally picks up, its own stock is already there.

In winter, he notices an ointment that has been lying with the Patna stockist for months while the Muzaffarpur stockist keeps reordering it. He asks his area manager to arrange the shift. In spring, the returns still come, because they always do. But they are a small pile, not the wall of cartons of the year before. And the owner knows, before the returns arrive, roughly how big they will be.

Why the others agree to it

Everyone in the chain is better off

For the stockist

He gets a complete Vyavora of his own: GST billing, stock, accounts, what each chemist owes him, and WhatsApp messages to his chemists. Usually the company pays for it. The company sees only its own medicines. It never sees his other companies, his purchase prices, his profit, his chemists' names or his bank balance. That line is fixed, and it is the reason stockists agree to join.

For the chemist

When he bills on Vyavora too, he gets billing that carries on even when the internet goes, and he can see his own slow and fast items with the money attached. Fewer of his strips reach their date unsold, because he can see which ones are just sitting.

For the company's area manager

He stops chasing stockists on the phone to ask what is left. He sees his district's stockists, item by item, and spends his day on the towns that need him.

What this does not do

Vyavora does not keep batch numbers or expiry dates. What it shows is how long your stock has been lying with each stockist, which tells you long before the date that a lot will not sell in time. It sees only stockists who bill on Vyavora, and it has no way into a stockist's existing software. It does not know which doctor wrote which prescription, and it does not record your medical representatives' visits. It does not keep drug licence registers or replace your depot's own software. You still have to decide and act; Vyavora shows you where.

Straight answers

Questions people in this trade ask

Will Vyavora tell me when a batch is about to expire?

No. It does not keep batches or expiry dates. It shows how long each item has been lying with each stockist. A syrup that has sat for most of its life in one godown is a warning long before the date on the box.

My stockists keep many companies. Will they agree to this?

Most do, because the line is clear. You see only your own medicines with them. You never see his other companies, his margins, his chemists or his money. And he gets a full billing and accounts system, usually paid for by you.

Can I see which chemist bought my medicine from the stockist?

No. The stockist's customer list stays his. You see your medicines going out by stockist, by item and by day, and how each town is doing. Where a chemist also bills on Vyavora, you see what went over his counter.

Most of my stockists already use billing software. What then?

Vyavora sees only stockists who bill on Vyavora. It does not read other software and does not buy data from anyone. Many companies begin with the stockists in the towns that matter most and add more as they see the value.

Does this help with hospital supply?

It shows your goods moving out of each stockist, including those who supply hospitals, and how long stock built for a hospital has been sitting. It does not handle hospital rate contracts or tender papers.

We have years of sales in Excel sheets. Do we have to type them in again?

No. Vyavora reads the Excel and PDF files you already keep, so your old records come in without retyping.

Your stockist ordered for the scheme. The patient buys for the prescription.