Bengaluru among top 10 cities to witness surge in online searches for health services

BENGALURU: With COVID cases rising exponentially across the country amidst the fear of fourth wave looming large, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi are witnessing a sudden surge in leading COVID-related searches for pharmacies, vaccination centres, ambulance service, and COVID test centres, reports the latest Just Dial Consumer Insights.

Searches for pharmacies dominated all COVID-related searches contributing almost 52% and along with vaccination centres (30%), ambulance (9.25%), COVID Tests (4.4%), and oxygen cylinders (2.5%) made up the top-5 most searched categories on Just Dial. The top-10 cities across the country that generated maximum searches were Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, and Chandigarh.

Delhi topped the searches for pharmacies followed by Mumbai and Bengaluru among Tier-I cities. In fact, Delhi and Mumbai contributed to 51% of the searches that were being generated from Tier-I cities. Month-on-Month (April vs. March) searches in Bengaluru saw a huge jump of 40%, Pune 24%, and Delhi 14%.

Mumbaikars made a beeline for vaccination centres followed by Delhi and Hyderabad. Bengaluru saw the maximum rise (month-on-month) in demand for vaccination centres at 14% and Pune at 11%.

Commenting on the trend, CMO, Just Dial, Prasun Kumar said, "As COVID cases have started increasing again in some parts of the country, we are witnessing increase in search trends related to health services on Just Dial. Pharmacies have been dominating most of the online searches and Justdial has aggregated neighbourhood pharmacies on the platform with credible information so that they are just a call away for our users. Besides pharmacies, over the last two years we have also aggregated a whole lot of emergency health service providers across India's Tier-1 and Tier-II cities to encourage overall digital adoption."

Demand for ambulances remained at par in Delhi and Mumbai followed by Pune while Chennai topped the list for COVID test centres ahead of Mumbai and Delhi. Vis-à-vis the third wave, searches for oxygen cylinders remained significantly low with Delhi and Mumbai generating maximum demand followed by Hyderabad.

Tier-II cities like Chandigarh, Jaipur, Nagpur, Indore, and Patna generated maximum searches for COVID-related health services as demand remained stable. Chandigarh, Lucknow, and Jaipur generated maximum searches for pharmacies among Tier-II cities. Searches in Chandigarh grew by 20 percent and Jaipur saw a 4 percent growth.

Nagpur topped the demand for vaccination centres with Indore and Jaipur in the second and the third place respectively. Demand for ambulances in Chandigarh shot-up by 36% in April vis-à-vis March and topped the demand across Tier-II cities ahead of Lucknow and Jaipur.

Jaipur and Coimbatore saw maximum demand for COVID test centres followed by Chandigarh while maximum demand for oxygen cylinders was from Lucknow, Jaipur, and Gorakhpur.