What brought you here?
01 The argument
Everyone quotes a price.
Almost nobody shows you what is behind it.
A rate is easy to print. What is harder, and what a chemist actually needs before committing money, is the rest of it: who else quotes this molecule and for how much, which batch the stock comes from and when it expires, and whether the boxes will turn up at all.
Careivo is built so that every number on a screen can be traced to something the system can prove. Where it cannot prove something, it says so in the same size type as everything else, rather than leaving you to find out at the counter.
02 The prescription — for the person holding one In build
A price for a prescription nobody has read is a guess.
- 01 Uploaded A photograph of the paper. Nothing is typed in again.
- 02 Being read Line by line — drug, dose, frequency, duration — each carrying how sure the reader is of it.
- 03 Pharmacist verified Signed off by a named pharmacist against a registration number. The reader never has the last word.
Could not be read. The fourth state, and the reason the other three are worth anything: handwriting the reader cannot resolve is not guessed at. The prescription stops there and says so.
Amoxicillin 500mg Capsule and Pantoprazole 40mg Tablet, priced whole at the chemists near you.
- PHM-0001 Shree MedicalKothrud · buys from Sharma Distributors — ₹141.52 Cheapest
- PHM-0003 New Life PharmacyShivajinagar · buys from Verma Medical +₹8.79 ₹150.31
- PHM-0002 Janata ChemistsDeccan · buys from Anand Agencies +₹9.22 ₹150.74
- PHM-0004 Sai Medical StoresKarve Road · buys from Gupta Pharma +₹10.93 ₹152.45
Bar: what that counter charges above the cheapest one. ₹10.93 between the ends — 7.7% — for the same two medicines.
A chemist who cannot price every line is not quoted at all, rather than quoted short: a cheaper total that is missing one of your drugs is not a cheaper total. And the spread is not the shops being greedy — a counter’s price is its own margin on the rate it bought at, which is the same rate card the section above is about, one step downstream.
03 The rate card — one molecule, every stockist
What it actually costs
| Ref / Distributor | PTR | Scheme | Stock | ETA | Flag | Add |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DST-0001Sharma Distributors | ₹55.86 | 5+1 | 15 | Tomorrow | Low | |
| DST-0002Anand Agencies | ₹51.83 | 5+1 | 120 | Today | ||
| DST-0003Verma Medical | ₹50.82 | — | 420 | Tomorrow | Lowest | |
| DST-0004Gupta Pharma | ₹51.33 | — | 120 | Tomorrow |
₹504 saved on 100 units · 9.9% spread
One screen instead of twelve phone calls
Illustrative rate card. Real stockists and real molecules; the prices are for demonstration.
04 Behind the number
Three things a price alone will not tell you.
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01
Which batch, and until when
Stock is not a number, it is boxes with expiry dates on them. Careivo holds it as batches and picks the earliest expiry first, so what reaches your shelf is what should leave theirs first.
A batch inside six months of expiry is not offered for sale.
-
02
What is actually coming
Short supply is normal: a distributor accepts an order and then sends what they have. Your order sheet shows ordered and coming as two separate columns, and the shortfall goes back into your cart against the next cheapest supplier who has it.
You are billed for what ships, not for what you asked for.
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03
What the price does not include
Where one distributor is cheapest per unit but cannot fill the whole basket, you are told both numbers — the split across several suppliers and the single-supplier total — and which lines are listed with no stock behind them.
Lowest listed price and cheapest available are different questions.
05 The split
One cart becomes one order per supplier.
- PO-00001 Sharma Distributors ₹4,740 2 lines
- PO-00002 Anand Agencies ₹5,985 3 lines
- PO-00003 Gupta Pharma ₹1,755 1 line
- Placed in one action ₹12,480 6 lines
Each stockist sees only their own lines. You place once; they are billed separately, on the credit terms you already have with each of them.
06 House rules
Four words this system will not print.
- Reserved
- Secured
- Allocated
- Guaranteed
Nothing is held for you until a distributor accepts the order, so no screen says it is. Where the system cannot prove a thing, it prints the thing it can prove instead — listed stock rather than in stock, lists every molecule rather than can supply. It is a duller vocabulary and a more useful one.
Three ways in. Pick the one you arrived as.
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