Amazon brings diagnostic test booking to app, sees big opportunity in healthcare | Mint

Amazon India customers can now book diagnostic tests on their app, as the e-commerce giant expands its medical offerings beyond online pharmacy and teleconsultations.

The company sees a massive opportunity to scale up its healthcare offerings, especially in India, a senior executive said in an interview.

“Healthcare is a daily need – second only to grocery in some ways. We’re not setting a fixed number goal, but this could become a very large and meaningful part of Amazon’s offerings in India,” Jayaramakrishnan Balasubramanian, category leader at Amazon Medical said.

Amazon is partnering with diagnostics lab Orange Health to offer the service, beginning with Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Mumbai and Hyderabad. The service will be scaled up gradually.

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Amazon wants to tap into its existing customer base to grow its healthcare services platform. “Our potential customer base is essentially every Amazon customer—anyone who is already transacting on our platform,” Balasubramanian said. “…we will work with the internal stakeholders and everyone to get more and more customers to try out Amazon Medical services. That will be the simplest next step,” he added.

Last week, the company announced that it would invest over $233 million in 2025 to enhance its India operations.

Expanding healthcare offerings

Amazon launched its online pharmacy two years ago, and teleconsultation services six months ago. With the addition of diagnostics, Amazon sees healthcare in India as a “long-term opportunity” given a consumer shift towards wellness care, Balasubramanian explained.

While the healthcare foray is in line with Amazon’s global strategy, India is the only country which has diagnostics services currently.

Amazon is not the only digital player entering diagnostics. Online pharmacies like Tata 1mg, Apollo 24/7, Pharmeasy, and Netmeds have all expanded their offerings beyond medicines to include diagnostics.

Industry experts believe that the diagnostics space, which has largely been unorganized and fragmented in India so far, holds significant potential due to changing consumer preferences as well as higher profit margins.

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“There are three primary revenue streams in the B2C healthtech space — teleconsultation, diagnostics, and pharmaceutical distribution. Of these, diagnostics remains the most significant profit pool,” Tarun Sharma, senior fund manager and healthcare and consumer strategy head at 360 ONE Asset, said. “So, this space continues to attract competition, which means constant pricing risk. At the same time, consumers are becoming increasingly discerning about the accuracy of reports, and the overall quality of their experience,” he added.

Amazon is hoping to differentiate itself in customer experience as it goes ahead. “We are not the first healthcare ecosystem in the country, and we won’t be the last,” said Balasubramanian.

“…we are looking to differentiate ourselves and become a connected care ecosystem where the customer will rely on having all their health records, all their doctor conversations, and all their medical prescriptions in one space, where it can eventually become an autopilot,” he added.

Amazon has been expanding strategically across categories in India over the last few years, from private labels for apparel to expanding its grocery platform Amazon Fresh.

In FY24, Amazon Seller Services, its marketplace arm, posted a revenue of ₹25,406 crore, up 14% from the previous year. Net loss narrowed by 29% to ₹3,470 crore thanks to better operational efficiencies.

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