Medicines in Ten Minutes: When Delivery Speed Outruns the Law
The world of quick commerce, popularised by ten-minute delivery culture, has now reached pharmaceuticals. In July 2025, Blinkit began piloting prescription medicine delivery in select areas of Bengaluru, and in August 2025, Zepto introduced ten-minute medicine delivery across Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad. Some platforms have taken this service a step further with a ‘doctor on call’ button that can generate a digital prescription, often after the medicine has already been added to the cart. The convenience is clear. The legal position, however, is not.
Licence to Sell: Reduced to a checkout button?
In India, sale of medicines has never been considered an ordinary retail activity. Section 18 of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 bars anyone from selling, stocking, or distributing a drug without a licence. Read with the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945, and the Pharmacy Act, 1948, the licensing regime ties lawful supply to a qualified person and to specific approved premises. The law does not distinguish between medicines sold online and those sold over the physical counter, as evidenced by the 2015 order issued by the Drugs Controller General, which confirmed that the same regulations apply to online sales of medicines. For instance, Schedule H, H1, and X drugs can only be sold against a doctor’s prescription. A pharmacist is not a mere formality in this process. Their role is to examine the prescription, identify any errors, and refuse the sale where the law requires it.
Quick commerce quietly flattens these regulatory complexities and operationalities into a single tap. When a prescription is generated merely to justify an already full basket, the statute's logic is turned on its head. The doctor may stop deciding what you need and start rubber-stamping what you have already decided to buy. A prescription meant to reflect medical judgment now serves as a key that unlocks a shopping cart.
Dark stores and the cold-chain problem
The problem isn't just selling medicines online; it's also how they're stored and delivered. Medicines must be stored in properly licensed premises, as heat, humidity, and light can affect them. Certain medicines also need to stay within a cold chain of 2°C to 8°C, with the temperature controlled at every stage of delivery. When medicines are moved through a network of opaque “dark stores”, a simple question arises: which licensed premises actually sold the medicine? A ten-minute delivery means little if it comes at the cost of breaking the chain of quality control that the law is meant to protect.
Active Judiciary v. Governmental Lethargy
The law has clearly not kept pace with market realities. On August 28, 2018, the Health Ministry published draft E-Pharmacy rules through Notification G.S.R. 817(E), aimed at regulating online medicine sales and establishing a robust registration regime, complete with verification duties and a prohibition on dispensing narcotics and Schedule X drugs. However, the same never came into force. The government also attempted to regulate online pharmacies and related e-commerce when it formulated a draft New Drugs, Medical Devices and Cosmetics Bill, 2022, aimed at replacing the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 and directly addressing online pharmacies, clinical testing, and medical devices. Alas, this bill too was never introduced in Parliament.
The Courts, however, have not been silent about the regulatory vacuum. In Dr. Zaheer Ahmed v. Union of India, Delhi High Court restrained the unlicensed online sale of medicines on December 12, 2018.
In November 2023, noting that more than 5 years have lapsed since the 2018 draft rules were published and that the Central Government has had sufficient time to frame the policy, the Delhi High Court gave the Centre ‘one last opportunity’ to do so within 8 weeks. In March 2024, the Court granted a ‘last and final’ extension of another 4 months.
Those deadlines are long gone, and no policy is in place. To date, the relevant draft rules and bill also languish in uncertainty. The result is an online pharmaceutical market continuing to operate in a regulatory vacuum. Even as courts and authorities deliberate how medicines can be sold online, online pharmacies have already moved on to the next question: how fast can they be delivered?
The “We’re just a Courier” defence
One regulatory defence online platforms love to resort to is being an ‘intermediary’. Marketplace E-Pharmacies claim to be intermediaries under Section 2(1)(w) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, arguing that they simply connect buyers with licensed sellers. Some have even told the Delhi High Court that they are essentially like Swiggy, delivering medicines to customers. But merely slapping the delivery label cannot be a justification. When a platform designs the interface, promotes/selects or relies on one licensed pharmacy, controls payment and delivery, and builds the verification process, it is exercising real control over the sale of medicines. A licensed pharmacy somewhere in the background to establish a contractual chain should not be enough to escape pharmaceutical accountability.
Our View: Regulate the Channel, not its Speed
In April 2025, the Health Ministry asked the Drugs Technical Advisory Board (DTAB) to review doorstep delivery, following which, in January 2026, online players dropped the “ten-minute” tag. However, this move was driven by concerns about rider safety, not by regulators’ concerns about patient safety.
Currently, banning online medicine sales and delivery would be a wrong move. For the elderly, physically challenged, and people managing chronic illnesses, dependable delivery is a real benefit. This was also the conclusion of the sub-committee constituted by the DTAB. The solution is to separate speed from shortcuts. Most of such safeguards were already included in the 2018 draft rules. However, as noted before, these were never notified.
Evidently, the most visible restraint seems to be on the delivery timeline, driven by protection of delivery riders (which is commendable but a separate concern), even as the rulebook governing online sales and drug safety remains largely overlooked. The problem was never the ten minutes, but what may have to be compromised to achieve that. In healthcare, convenience cannot come before safety.