In-hospital pharmacies, organised retail pharmacy chains and the distributors that supply them.
Dispenses the medicines and consumables used during and after treatment. Inside hospitals, the in-house pharmacy is a meaningful part of each bill; outside, organised chains (Apollo Pharmacy, MedPlus) and distributors (Entero, Keimed) take share from India's lakhs of independent chemists with private-label generics and digital ordering.
Pharmacy and consumables are a quiet profit pool for hospitals - and the part now under the Supreme Court's scrutiny over mark-ups. For retail chains it is a scale game: thin margins, but large revenue and growing private-label share.
Retail pharmacy EBITDA margins are mid-single digits and distributors' lower still; private-label generics lift chain gross margins well above branded resale. Inside hospitals, medicines and consumables are often a fifth or more of an inpatient bill, sold at MRP, which is why a margin cap would matter.