Called Zepto Pharmacy, the new offering will enable users to book prescription medicines, complementing its existing bouquet of over-the-counter (OTC) drugs.

"Over the past 12 months, the team has worked tirelessly to perfect the customer experience, supply chain, and compliance at a small scale, and we want to grow it steadily from here. Our objective is to keep operational standards extremely high and not scale too rapidly given the complexity of this category," Zepto cofounder and CEO Aadit Palicha said in a post on LinkedIn while announcing the launch of the new service.

A quick check of the feature on Zepto's app revealed that the platform is selling antibiotics, ointments, antihistamines and nasal sprays.

Quick Online Pharmacy: The Next Frontier

With this, Zepto has become the latest quick commerce startup to jump on the 10-minute medicine delivery bandwagon. A few days ago, its rival Blinkit began piloting the delivery of prescription medicines in select parts of Bengaluru.

Swiggy's Instamart, too, reportedly partnered with digital pharmacy PharmEasy in October last year to deliver medicines in under 10 minutes.

In April this year, PhonePe's ecommerce platform Pincode rolled out a 10-minute medicine delivery service in three cities. There were also reports that Flipkart Minutes was looking to leverage its sister company SastaSundar to foray into medicine deliveries.

Not just this, Tata 1mg, in partnership with BigBasket, and Apollo 24/7 were in various stages of piloting instant medicine delivery.

Amid all this, new startups like Plazza and Farmako have also emerged to offer such delivery in under 30 minutes.

At the heart of this push is the country's epharmacy market, which is reportedly projected to become a $12.7 Bn opportunity by 2033.