Just what the doctor ordered: Reliance acquires Netmeds, as battle with Amazon gets intense
Just as was widely expected, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), through its subsidiary Reliance Retail Ventures Limited (RRVL) has acquired a majority equity stake in Vitalic Health and its subsidiaries (collectively known as ‘Netmeds’) for a deal worth Rs 620 crore.
This investment represents 60% holding in Vitalic and 100% direct equity ownership of its subsidiaries: Tresara Health Private Limited, Netmeds Market Place Limited and Dadha Pharma Distribution Pvt Limited.
Incorporated in 2015, Vitalic and its subsidiaries are in the business of pharma distribution, sales, and business support services. Its subsidiary also runs the online pharmacy platform Netmeds, which in a sense provides the basis for the whole deal.
Speaking on this strategic investment, Isha Ambani, Director, RRVL, in a press statement, said, “the addition of Netmeds enhances Reliance Retail’s ability to provide good quality and affordable health care products and services, and also broadens its digital commerce proposition to include most daily essential needs of consumers. We are impressed by Netmeds’ journey to build a nationwide digital franchise in such a short time and are confident of accelerating it with our investment and partnership.”
Pradeep Dadha, Founder & CEO, Netmeds, said, “It is indeed a proud moment for 'Netmeds' to join Reliance family and work together to make quality healthcare affordable and accessible to every Indian. With the combined strength of the group’s digital, retail and tech platforms, we will strive to create more value for everyone in the ecosystem, while providing a superior Omni Channel experience to consumers.”
Netmeds, is a fully licensed e-pharma portal that offers authenticated prescription and Over the Counter (OTC) medicine along with other health products. Netmeds offers fast delivery of prescription medications to over 20,000 pin codes. Netmeds has served over 5.7 million customers in more than 670 cities and towns.
Consumers get access to more than 70,000 prescription drugs and thousands of non-prescription goods for wellness, health, and personal care.
Netmeds is promoted by Dadha Pharma, a Chennai-based company pharma company that was started in 1914, and got into drug manufacturing in 1972.
The fact that it is an Indian company allows it to maintain inventory as per Indian government rules for e-commerce. This is something that works against Amazon India.
Reliance Retail has an existing tie-up with Netmeds --- in May they joined hands together to deliver groceries also from its online retail store JioMart.
Netmeds valuation - It raised three rounds - $50M, $14M, $35M - a total of $99M. Assuming reliance ONLY paid 620 cr for Netmeds (it got 60% of the parent), the group was valued at 1000 cr. That's about $150M. Looks like the investors will just about recover their investment.August 18, 2020
It's all happening on the e-pharmacy front
What is most interesting is Reliance acquiring Netmeds comes less than a week after Amazon itself started selling medicines online. It has rolled out the Amazon Pharmacy service in Bengaluru allowing customers to order medical supplies and prescription drugs, among others.
The entry of the heavyweight RIL shows how lucrative the online pharma business is now. It is a happening time for the segment as online ordering and delivery of medicines has increased following the Covid-19 outbreak as customers stay at home and follow social distancing norms. According to one research, this market segment is expected to touch $3.7 billion by 2022.
Apart from Reliance and Amazon, another e-commerce biggie, the Walmart-owned Flipkart is also planning to jump into this pharma bandwagon.
AMD RX 6950 XT leak suggests GPU will be as pricey as Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti
AMD’s RX 6950 XT, the rumored refresh of its flagship GPU, might come with a seriously weighty price tag if a fresh leak is anything near the right ballpark.
There are some caveats here, as you might expect – and more than normal around a pricing leak, we’ll come back to that – but on the face of it, the RX 6950 XT has seen pre-release product listings at a couple of Australian retailers, Megabuy and ITnest (as PC Gamer spotted).
The damage that the 6950 XT will supposedly do to your wallet is a hefty AU$3,240 (around $2,400, £1,800) at Megabuy – ouch indeed.
Now, note that the product listing actually says the graphics card is a ‘Gigabyte Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming OC’, which is the existing flagship, but the product code clearly states ‘GV-R695XTGAMING-OC-16GD’, referring to a 6950 XT model.
It’s likely that someone has made a mistake typing in the full name – or used a template and not changed that bit – although of course this could indicate the entire listing is a mistake. We can’t rule that out, anyway.
However, note that there is an existing listing for the Gigabyte 6900 XT Gaming OC, product code ‘GV-R69XTGAMING OC-16GD’ – so R69, not R695 – and this is priced much lower at AU$1,949 (around $1,450, £1,100).
Furthermore, as VideoCardz picked up, Gigabyte has recently registered the GV-R695XTGAMING OC-16GD product code with the EEC (Eurasian Economic Commission), which is another tick in the box for its likely authenticity – though none of this represents anything like a cast-iron guarantee, of course.
Analysis: Performance expectations will be high if there’s anything to this leak
If true, this price tag would represent a massive leap compared to the cost of the 6900 XT – a hike of 66% on the current flagship going by the pricing observed above at Megabuy. Now obviously, we’ve got to be careful around any leak like this, as the price given could merely be a placeholder – in other words, a guess.
However, if it’s true, or close to the mark, you can be sure that the performance increase which is delivered by the 6950 XT over the current flagship will obviously be far more modest than the level of hike seen with the pricing.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that the Megabuy price for Gigabyte’s RTX 3090 Ti cards is only a few percent higher than this purported 6950 XT price tag, so the expectation would certainly be that it competes with Nvidia’s new flagship. If this pricing is correct, of course…
The evidence is really mounting up regarding this trio of RDNA 2 refreshes, and we’ve even been treated to pics of them – with the graphics cards being smart-looking black editions.
It seems more and more likely that this will be the next step AMD takes with its GPU launch schedule, before debuting a whole new RDNA 3 range later in 2022 (and if the 6950 XT price is high, it’ll surely be even more tempting to be patient and wait for the next-gen flagship for those who want a powerhouse card).
Keep your MacBook Pro, I only have eyes for Nvidia Studio laptops
When the latest generation of MacBook Pro was revealed several weeks ago, I found myself caught up in the subsequent excitement despite being a lifelong Windows user. Its announcement was masterfully done, with people scrambling to preorder minutes after the stream had finished. Had I a substantial stack of cash to my name I might have also joined in, but it wasn’t just the hefty asking price that made me come to my senses.
Given the choice, I’d buy an Nvidia Studio laptop over a MacBook Pro. My own preference for Windows-based hardware does factor into that decision, but I also feel that they’re better optimized for what I would want in a creative workstation.
After all, despite all the wealthy business execs that will be buying the new Apple flagship, the MacBook Pro is designed with content creators in mind, which is partly what made the decision to remove most of its ports back in 2016 so controversial.
Apple may have restored them in this new iteration, but it still irked me that they had ever been removed in the first place. On top of this, while it may be one of the best choices for photographers and video editors, my creative interests sit more with 3D sculpting and other graphically demanding applications. Call me old fashioned, but I like having a dedicated graphics card over an integrated system in my workstation laptops, especially when it comes with goodies like DLSS and raytracing.
Which is exactly why I would buy an Nvidia Studio laptop over a MacBook Pro. Nvidia may be more known for its gaming products, but the features it includes in its GeForce gaming line also have benefits for creatives. RTX GPU-accelerated ray tracing and AI-enhanced denoising are an amazing boost for anyone who works with applications such as Autodesk Arnold and Blender for example, all thanks to Nvidia Studio drivers.
The driving force of creativity
(Image credit: Adobe / Nvidia)
Studio drivers differ from the usual Game Ready drivers by optimizing a wide range of applications that cover almost the entire scope of the creative industry, such as the Adobe creative suite and Davinci Resolve. These Studio drivers come preinstalled on Nvidia Studio laptops, but they’re also compatible with cards from the GeForce GTX 10-series, right up to the professional Quadro range, (though you’ll see best results on an RTX-powered GPU).
So if you can download drivers onto any compatible Nvidia-powered device, what’s so special about Nvidia Studio laptops? Well, the entire device is built for content creators so it’s not just the software you’re optimizing. This means you’re getting things like more RAM and storage than a typical laptop, alongside high-resolution, colour-accurate displays and usually, a good selection of ports for peripherals and SD cards.
The Nvidia Studio allocation is also a badge, providing an easy way for non-tech savvy folks to know that whatever laptop bears the RTX Studio symbol has been designed from the ground up to provide creatives with the power to edit up to 8K video, real-time ray tracing, and AI-assisted features, all in a slim, robust chassis. Some even come with perks like an OLED display, alongside great sRGB and Adobe color coverage and high refresh rates.
(Image credit: Apple)
I would like to drill in that I by no means think the new MacBook Pro is a bad laptop, and I’d be out of my mind to suggest anything of the sort. It is, however, not the best choice for everyone despite its popularity, and I feel like the few weaknesses it has are covered by the wide range of Nvidia Studio laptops now available on the market.
If you don’t want to be a part of the expansive Apple Ecosystem then it makes little sense to jump in with just the MacBook Pro, and while its fanless design and mini-LED display have already converted some Windows users, Nvidia has a trump card that Apple has no chance to counter.
Specifications for content creation and videogames are very similar, which means that Nvidia Studio laptops are also, in a sense, powerful gaming laptops in disguise. I wouldn’t recommend them as a dedicated gaming device, but for students and working professionals who also like to crack open Steam after a few hours of editing videos or 3D rendering, they make the perfect hybrid solution.
You can certainly play some games on macOS, but the list of supported titles pales in comparison to the world of gaming available to Windows users, and you won’t need to jump through hoops to do so. Currently, you can game on a Mac if you download a Windows emulator such as Parallels, but it’s not exactly a streamlined process.
Meanwhile, games will run on both Nvidia Studio drivers and Game Ready drivers, but switching between the two is only a matter of pressing a button to download the driver you need in GeForce Experience. You’re truly getting the best of both worlds.
Not only that, but the range of different components within these laptops means that certain models are better optimized for specific creative tasks. A MacBook Pro might be a fantastic all-rounder, but that won’t come to much if you need a beastly Nvidia RTX 3080 or RTX A5000 for 3D animation work, or you want raytracing and AI-enhancements on a tight budget.
It's all about the hardware
If we dive into the comparisons that Apple made during its October unveiling for the MacBook Pro then we can see that the Intel product being stacked against it for comparison was an MSI GP66 Leopard gaming laptop, equipped with an Intel i7-11800H processor, a GeForce RTX 3070 GPU and 16GB of RAM. Hardly an underpowered device, but there are better optimized and more powerful options available fighting Nvidia’s corner.
And of course, there’s the cost to think about. A 14-inch MacBook Pro with a 10-core CPU / 16-core GPU M1 Pro and 16GB of RAM will set you back $2,499. Meanwhile, a Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED comes with, unsurprisingly, an OLED display, alongside an 11th generation Intel i9-11980HK processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU and 32GB of RAM for $2,749.
To showcase the capabilities of Nvidia Studio devices, artist Steven Christopher has recreated the now iconic living room from The Simpsons using Blender and Unreal Engine 4, complete with raytraced lighting. The project was created using an RTX 3070-powered Gigabyte Aero laptop and according to Christopher took around 4 days from start to finish.
Given this kind of creative showcasing isn’t what’s usually displayed in marketing content for the MacBook Pro, I have my doubts over how well it would hold its own against these specialized devices, especially without any raytracing capabilities. If my interests were with video or photo editing and audio mixing then I’d likely feel more torn, but as someone who dabbles in 3D sculpting and is learning my way around Unreal Engine 4, Nvidia will be winning my favor (and cash).
Considering the additional features you’re getting, that’s an easy choice in my book. Perhaps I’ll be the only one dying on this hill, but Nvidia’s work into developing the Studio laptops currently available has certainly persuaded me from jumping ship to macOS any time soon.
Where does that leave the MacBook Pro? In the words of Shania Twain, “that don’t impress me much”.
