What it does: Offers an e-commerce platform, providing healthcare equipment and materials used by healthcare institutions.
Best known for: PinkBlue brings together thousands of manufacturers and healthcare institutions to one e-commerce platform. The company claims to be the widest online catalogue for dental materials with more than 26,000 dental products from more than 300 brands.
Staff stats: 100+ since 2018
The good bits: The company is often praised for its great learning environment, supportive higher management (the company's founders are often complimented for being helpful and approachable), and opportunities to take complete ownership of projects.
The not-so-good bits: Poor employee retention and long hours are a common issue.
Hiring grads with top marks in: A variety of jobs are open to candidates from any degree, as long as they have good communication skills or experience in operations, sales, web technologies, and strategy. More specialised roles require a Bachelor's degree in computer science engineering, marketing, business, and other related disciplines.
PinkBlue was established by the Indian Institute of Management alumnae and focuses on technology-driven clinical supplies management. By using e-commerce to distribute clinical supplies, the company aims to bring together all healthcare product manufacturers and healthcare institutions on a single platform. For PinkBlue, the vision is to enable healthcare institutions to treat inventory management and materials purchases as a digital activity that only requires setting up a few parameters.
The company also offers SaaS-based intuitive materials management software to improve the supply chain management capacity of manufacturers and healthcare institutions, thereby creating complete visibility in a highly complex supply chain. PinkBlue considers itself a frontrunner in terms of the quality and size of its team, thought leadership, and the number of suppliers and customers they work with. For PinkBlue, the goal is to create a fully-automated, integrated supply chain that demands zero effort from stakeholders. Solving the supply chain efficiency should create 20-30% more value through technology and consolidation.
PinkBlue's co-founders are Valliappan Kumarappan, who previously worked as a strategy consultant for Indian SMEs and Fortune 500 MNCs, entrepreneur Varun Singh, and technology-expert Arun Sriram.
The idea behind the company appeared in 2012 when Valliappan assisted his in-laws, who were in the field of pharmaceutical distribution, to set up a distribution channel for clinical products. While he was setting up a sales team to target a new market, Valliappan realised that a brand-specific sales force would be a disadvantage to economics.
With more research, Valliappan found out that the largest dental manufacturers had 80 sales executives across India, covering only 15-20% of the market. A platform that provided convenient information about products was absent in hospitals and clinics across the country.
With this problem in mind, Valliappan set out to create his own platform to solve the clinical and product requirements of healthcare institutions in India. In 2013, Valliappan successfully created the platform with the help of his friend, Varun Singh.
The recruitment process varies from role to role, but graduates may expect telephone or face-to-face interviews with a HR representative or co-founders. For more job roles, much value is placed in good communication skills and proficiency in computer applications, among others.
Long hours and hectic schedules may be an issue for graduates. Though reviews often mention a 'high-pressure' environment with a heavy workload, the company's 'supportive' management and friendly work environment may make working hours bearable.