Liki24.com is a Ukrainian online medicines delivery service founded in 2017. Three years later, in July 2020, the company started its international expansion; now, it is successfully developing in Poland, Romania, and Hungary — recently, the number of Liki24.com clients exceeded 1 million. AIN.Capital found out how the company works abroad.
Liki24.com has had international ambitions since its very foundation. According to the founder and CEO, Anton Avrinskyi, the team has initially set a goal to build a global business operating in many markets and allowing millions of people to purchase medicines cheaper.
The first country was Poland in July 2020
The team also thought about the United Kingdom, but finally, they decided on the Polish market based on the following:
- far less cost of launch;
- it’s a neighbor of Ukraine;
- Poland is the fastest-growing nation in Europe.
In the Forbes interview in July 2021, Avrinskyi said that the Polish market is different from the Ukrainian; it’s less consolidated, more regulated, and conservative. However, there are also positive changes. In 2020, Poland implemented a united electronic prescription system simplifying drug delivery and logistics.
At the moment, Liki24 has its delivery service in Warsaw. Postal delivery is also available countrywide. Recently, the Polish logistics company InPost has installed 70 parcel lockers with fridges in Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw, and Lodz. As a result, users can quickly and safely get their medicines that require a particular temperature during transport and storage.
The next goal was Romania
New markets to expand were selected in three steps; the market analysis has been performed together with one of Liki24.com investors — Genesis Investments. After all, they chose a country with a relatively small drug market characterized by low competition, so in July 2021, the company arose in Bucharest.
Nowadays, Liki24.com has its own courier services in Bucharest and Constanța, providing delivery to all cities. The company is working on extending the local geography of the service availability to launch the 30-minutes express delivery, which is very popular in Ukraine.
Liki24.com is promoted in Romania via contextual ads on Google, Facebook, Instagram, and through influencers. However, word-of-mouth marketing is still the best.
The service is user-friendly and helps people solve a row of problems: granting access to high-quality goods, saving time and money, becoming popular from user to user, and the last is the best promotion. Several local media paid attention to Liki24.com in their releases.
According to the company representatives, after six months of its operation in the market, its turnover increased more than ten times in Romania.
In the past year, Liki24 also launched the courier service in Budapest, the capital of Hungary
The company reps said that currently, the team works on legal issues without disclosing any figures.
Drug delivery is one of the most regulated and legislation-sensible industries in Europe. For example, a law effective January 1, 2021, significantly changed the meds delivery format in Hungary. That’s why our legal team now works there hard to find an optimal solution within the current legislation.
In 2021, Liki24.com had over 300,000 users in Poland, Hungary, and Romania
The numbers speak for the demand. Another good news for us is that the repeat purchase rate hit 70%: users test our service, like it, and purchase meds and healthy goods again at our platform, the company reps said.
The main trend Liki24 can confirm for all three countries is increasing online purchases of drugs and wellness goods, home delivery, and online booking.
Currently, the company is focused on scaling and developing the platform in operating markets. Further foreign expansion is not ended, but still, there are many things to be researched in different countries, not only within Europe.
