Every month a chemist asks me some version of the same question: "Is it allowed?" He has seen the apps deliver medicine to his own customers and assumes they have a licence he does not. They do not. There is no e-pharmacy licence in India, because there is no e-pharmacy law. There is the law that already governs his counter, applied to a phone.
This is a plain-language guide to that law for a chemist who wants to take orders online. It is not legal advice; the sources are linked and your drug inspector's reading is the one that counts.
1. The sale happens at your licensed shop
Medicines may be sold by retail only from premises holding a licence under the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945, the Form 20 and Form 21 licences every chemist already has on the wall. An online order does not move the sale to the internet. It moves the customer's request to you, and the sale still happens at your shop, from your stock, under your licence. That is the whole principle. Everything below follows from it.
2. A registered pharmacist supervises the dispensing
At the counter, a registered pharmacist must be present and must supervise the sale of scheduled drugs. Online changes nothing: the bag that leaves the shop on a bike must have been checked by the pharmacist the same way the bag handed over the counter was. The pharmacist is not a formality in this model. He or she is the reason a neighbourhood pharmacy can do what a warehouse cannot, which I argued in The prescription is the product.
3. Schedule H and H1 drugs need a prescription you have seen
Antibiotics, most chronic-disease drugs and anything else on Schedule H may be sold only against a prescription from a registered medical practitioner. Schedule H1, the stricter list introduced in 2013, adds a register: prescriber, patient, drug and quantity for every sale, kept for three years. Online orders make this easier, not harder, because the prescription arrives as an image and the sale is already a record. The failure mode is dispensing against a photo nobody looked at.
A prescription from a teleconsultation is valid. The Telemedicine Practice Guidelines of March 2020 allow a registered practitioner to prescribe after a video or phone consultation, give the patient a signed copy, and send it to a pharmacy with the patient's consent. Schedule X and NDPS drugs are excluded from that route and should never be dispensed on an online order.
4. Doorstep delivery is allowed, with conditions
On 26 March 2020 the Ministry of Health notified a rule, under the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, that lets Form 20 and Form 21 licence holders sell by retail with doorstep delivery. The conditions, in plain words: Schedule H drugs only against a prescription received physically or by email; if you take prescriptions by email, register that address with your licensing authority; send the bill to the customer; keep a record of every such transaction. The notification was framed around the pandemic, and the chemists' association has argued it should be revoked, but as of now it is the framework under which home delivery by licensed shops operates. Read the notification itself before you rely on my summary.
5. The draft e-pharmacy rules never happened
In August 2018 the ministry published draft rules for e-pharmacies, a proposed new Part VIB of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, with registration, data-localisation and advertising conditions. They were never notified. In July 2025 the government told the Rajya Sabha they were still under review. So there is no e-pharmacy registration to apply for, and no app has one. Anyone delivering medicine lawfully in India today is doing it from a licensed retail premises under the rules above.
There is no e-pharmacy law in India. There is the counter's law, applied to a phone.
What this means in practice
| Rule | In practice |
|---|---|
| Take the order anywhere | WhatsApp, a call, a platform, a storefront under your shop's name. The channel is not regulated; the sale is. |
| Dispense only from your shop | Your licence, your stock, your pharmacist. Never route an order to be filled from somewhere else. |
| See the prescription before you pack | For Schedule H and H1. Keep the image with the bill. |
| Write the H1 register as you sell | Or use software that writes it from the bill. Three years' retention. |
| Send the bill with the bag or by email | And keep the record of the transaction. |
| Refuse what cannot go online | Schedule X, NDPS, anything without a valid prescription. |
Why this favours the neighbourhood chemist
Read the list again and notice who already does every item: the licensed shop with a pharmacist and a customer base within two kilometres. The things a chemist lacks are the storefront on the phone, the order queue, the rider and the software that writes the register from the bill. Those are exactly the parts that make sense to share across many shops, which is what a platform is for, and what MedMate does under the shop's own name: medicine from the neighbourhood pharmacy, delivered in minutes, dispensed by the pharmacist who was always going to have to check it anyway.
The apps did not find a loophole. They found the parts of the job the shop had not got round to. The law was on the chemist's side the whole time.