The Centre will consider next week a proposal for drawing up separate guidelines for the sale of medicines online to help establish a legal framework for e-pharmacy businesses.

The matter was taken up at the Centre’s first interaction with start-up founders on Thursday, Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said. She said e-pharmacy-related issues will also be discussed in the Parliament.

At a recent event, K. B. Aggarwal, Additional Secretary (Food and Drugs), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, had said: “With the advent of e-pharmacy, there is a need to amend the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, as it does not differentiate between offline and online pharmacies.”

Dhaval Shah, founder of the online pharma start-up PharmEasy – a platform connecting people to their local pharmacy or registered vendor for the services they opt for – said that e-pharmacy businesses want the government to soon bring out separate guidelines to ensure ease of doing business for the sector. Mr. Shah, who attended the Thursday’s meeting, said though some offline pharmacies might consider orders without prescriptions, PharmEasy ensures that pharmacies in its network reject orders without prescriptions, and that its entire operation is done only on the basis of a valid prescription.

“We want to improve the medical sector environment.”

The meeting with start-up founders was convened by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) – the nodal government body on the start-up initiative. However, only 28 start-ups, including majors such as Practo and Mapmygenome, participated. They raised issues related to taxation, complex compliance requirements and other difficulties in doing business in India. An official statement on the participants showed that leading start-ups such as Paytm was represented in the two-hour-long meeting not by their founders, but only senior executives.

Ms. Sitharaman said the government “was keen to know their (founders’) views on the start-up activity, their expectation from the government and the difficulties they are facing with respect to various other ministries.”