Which online pharmacy in India offers the best combination of price and authenticity?

Evaluate PharmEasy, Tata 1mg, Netmeds, and Apollo Pharmacy based on medicine prices, discount offers, delivery time, genuine medicine assurance, and pharmacy consultation services.

# Aplly.xyz Case Study Submission

## Title
Which online pharmacy in India offers the best combination of price and authenticity?

## Type
Multi-Criteria Product Comparison

## Difficulty
Intermediate

## Estimated Time
60 minutes

## Overview
Evaluate PharmEasy, Tata 1mg, Netmeds, and Apollo Pharmacy based on medicine prices, discount offers, delivery time, genuine medicine assurance, and pharmacy consultation services.

## Case Details

Function Focus: Multi-Criteria Product Comparison — manual reasoning, decomposition, and critical judgment (no spreadsheet or AI tool permitted in Phase 1)

Scenario:
You are the analyst at a fictional consultancy ("Praxis Advisors") tasked with answering: Which online pharmacy in India offers the best combination of price and authenticity?. You have a clean, synthetic dataset described below. You must produce a defensible answer using structured reasoning — no tool-assisted shortcut on the first pass.

Dataset Structure:
- platform
- category
- monthly_active_users_cr
- avg_order_value_rs
- commission_pct
- delivery_time_days
- return_rate_pct
- seller_count
- customer_rating
- gmv_cr_per_month

Tasks:
1. Define the evaluation criteria for the choice and assign weights to each, justified explicitly.
2. Score each alternative by hand against the criteria using the dataset columns.
3. Compute a weighted total and rank the alternatives; show the arithmetic.
4. Run a sensitivity check: change the top two weights by +/10 points and note whether the winner changes.
5. After the manual scoring, redo it in a spreadsheet and reconcile any ranking differences.

Expected Output:
A one-page recommendation memo: criteria & weights, scorecard table, final ranking, sensitivity result.

Evaluation Criteria:
Explicit and justified weights, arithmetic correctness, meaningful sensitivity analysis, defensible final ranking.

## Data Sources

| platform | category | monthly_active_users_cr | avg_order_value_rs | commission_pct | delivery_time_days | return_rate_pct | seller_count | customer_rating | gmv_cr_per_month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon India | E-commerce | 4.8 | 2250 | 12 | 2.5 | 8.2 | 850000 | 4.5 | 12500 |
| Flipkart | E-commerce | 4.5 | 1800 | 14 | 2.8 | 9.5 | 620000 | 4.3 | 11200 |
| Meesho | E-commerce | 3.2 | 450 | 8 | 4.5 | 12 | 1800000 | 4 | 2800 |
| Paytm | Payments | 3.5 | 4500 | 1.5 | 0 | 0 | 25000000 | 4.2 | 15000 |
| Google Pay | Payments | 4.2 | 3200 | 1.2 | 0 | 0 | 30000000 | 4.6 | 18000 |
| PhonePe | Payments | 3.8 | 2800 | 1.3 | 0 | 0 | 28000000 | 4.4 | 16000 |
| Zomato | Food Delivery | 1.8 | 420 | 22 | 0.4 | 4.5 | 350000 | 4.1 | 2200 |
| Swiggy | Food Delivery | 1.6 | 380 | 24 | 0.4 | 5 | 280000 | 4 | 2000 |
| Zepto | Quick Comm. | 0.8 | 320 | 18 | 0.2 | 3.2 | 45000 | 4.3 | 850 |
| Blinkit | Quick Comm. | 0.6 | 350 | 20 | 0.2 | 3.5 | 38000 | 4.2 | 720 |


Full dataset: https://github.com/arora200/aplly_case_db/datasets/055-ecommerce-digital-services (synthetic, 16 records)

## Solution Frameworks
Multi-criteria weighted scoring, pairwise trade-off analysis, cost-benefit decomposition, sensitivity/robustness check

## Solver Guidance & Tutorials
_Solver guidance added by the pipeline (tutorial links) — see `solver_guidance` field._

## What You'll Learn
- Turn vague preferences into weighted criteria
- Build a transparent scorecard
- Test how fragile your winner is

## Tags
Online Pharmacy, PharmEasy, Tata 1mg, India

## Registration Links
Register as Solver / Register as Evaluator