1000Farmacie brings thousands of pharmacies online with minimal efforts.
Harneet Bhalla currently heads marketing at 1000Farmacie, an Italian digital health platform valued at €75 million. The platform has established itself as a trusted partner for online pharmacies, serving millions of patients across Italy with medicines, healthcare products, and value-added services.
Under Bhalla’s leadership, 1000Farmacie processes nearly 800,000 orders annually, drives a €43 million GMV, and has launched an innovative subscription programme with over 70,000 members, further strengthening its leadership in the digital healthcare space.
Medianews4u.com caught up with Harneet Bhalla CMO 1000Farmacie
Q. What goals have been set for 1000Farmacie when it comes to increasing its penetration in the country? What is the gameplan to get there?
There are three core pillars of this: Broaden availability, deepen habit, and raise trust. Practically, that means 1) expanding product categories across medical conditions and delivery coverage/speed in regions and cohorts, 2) lifting repeat rate via a stronger Care Plan/subscription programme & app adoption, and 3) making trust more visible with clear pricing, content, and reliable service.
Q. What tactics work in navigating the regulation complexities of healthcare marketing? Is it more difficult compared to other countries like Italy?
We always start with “safety by design” i.e pre-approved playbooks for content, creatives, and targeting. We avoid condition specific retargeting, label all offers transparently, and keep medical advice strictly expert led.
Every market has nuances; the only scalable tactic is to treat Legal/Medical as sprint partners, not gatekeepers, and build reusable compliance checklists into the brief → creative → launch workflow.
Q. Is adding noise to a consumer’s life and sending out incorrect messaging, tone deaf content challenges in healthcare marketing?
In healthcare, noise erodes credibility. We use an “evidence + empathy” filter: if a claim isn’t evidence backed or the tone isn’t human, we don’t ship it.
Systemically: fewer, higher quality touchpoints, strong audience/need mapping, and continuous copy testing for clarity and sensitivity is way better than sending something that a user would not appreciate. E.g. If a healthcare org sends a push notification which is 20% off on Chemo kits for cancer patients, no one is going to appreciate this.
Q. What marketing campaigns and innovations can we expect from 1000Farmacie as we head into the festive season? Will there be a lot of focus on hyperlocal marketing?
Expect a couple of tracks: 1) Great offers to make sure healthcare is affordable, while keeping it light on the pockets 2) Great design to ensure content delivery is spot on and visually appealing 3) Educational content to make sure healthcare is understandable and less intimidating for people to understand their bodies.
Q. Will the media mix skew heavily towards digital?
Yes, digital remains the spine: search, shopping, affiliates, and lifecycle CRM. We have complemented in the past with a selective OOH near high intent zones and where they demonstrably improve trust and conversion.
This season, it would be almost all of it in digital with some strategic packaging decisions.
Q. Is it a challenge to balance performance marketing versus brand building for 1000Farmacie in marketing activities?
We run a hard working lower funnel with CAC/LTV guardrails and improve brand via app adoption & care plan + with the help of educational content circulated via CRM platforms.
Instead of putting marketing dollars behind the brand creatives, we prefer at this stage to put those resources behind improving customer experience on our platforms & services.
Q. Is the main goal of marketing for 1000Farmacie gaining consumer trust?
Trust is the constraint and the multiplier. Our job is to make trust visible: pharmacist presence, authentic reviews, accurate availability/ETAs, clear substitutions, and no surprise fees.
When trust rises, every downstream metric compounds. I believe every healthcare org is always working on gaining consumer trust in their own ways.
Q. How is the partnership with mFilterIt helping combat ad fraud and in enabling better brand safety?
We use partners like mFilterIt for fraud prevention through bot traffic, invalid attribution etc. This partnership helped us eradicate 9% fraud rate across traffic sources and 16% correction in misattribution at the order level.
Outcome was cleaner media, better viewability, more accurate attribution, and stronger brand safety controls which is especially critical in health categories.
Q. What role has data analytics played in developing a subscription programme with over 70,000 members?
A lot. We built it on cohorts, RFM, and condition/need clusters. Analytics shaped benefit design (shipping, priority service, bundled services), price fencing, and upgrade paths.
We watch leading indicators (repeat intent, basket mix, ticket reasons) and run churn early warning models that trigger save motions in CRM. Result: higher ARPU and steadier repeats.
