We are participating in Y Combinator and have raised $1 million pre-seed to digitize Africa’s neighbourhood pharmacies
We’re excited to announce that we have raised $1 million in pre-seed funding to drive the digitization of Africa’s pharmaceutical sector. We are also participating in the Winter 2022 cohort of Silicon Valley’s prestigious Y Combinator accelerator.
Our mission is to build a tech-enabled, pharmacy-centred healthcare network across the continent, and these funds, as well as our participation in Y Combinator, will accelerate the fruition of this goal. We are not only making it easier for neighbourhood pharmacies and PPMVs (patent and proprietary medicine vendors) to access affordable and authentic medicines from leading manufacturers. We are also rolling out our PMR (patient medical records) platform that will make them more efficient and profitable, and give them access to consolidated data on customers to support the delivery of better healthcare services across the continent.
Transforming Africa’s pharmaceutical sector with technology solutions
In Africa’s $45 billion pharmaceutical industry (projected to reach $70 billion by 2030), PPMVs are responsible for 80 percent of sales. These guys are basically businesses without a trained pharmacist that sell pharmaceutical products on a retail basis for-profit and they provide the main source of medicines for many common illnesses. However, they have to navigate an opaque supply chain and a fragmented marketplace to access the stock they need for their stores which can make them very unprofitable. This also means manufacturers have limited visibility into their performance, leading to inefficient decision making on forecasting, production and distribution.
We have created a digital procurement platform that makes it possible for store owners to source all the medicines, consumables and small medical devices for their practice via a mobile app or mobile responsive web store at open-air medicine market prices and have them delivered within 24 hours. All products are vetted before distribution to verify their authenticity.
Our proprietary Patient Medication Records and Inventory Control (PMR) software, Remedial Rx also enables these store owners to build and access a consolidated database of customer information that will drive the delivery of improved healthcare services across the continent. With our platform, it will be easier to make informed decisions on which products are best suited to a customer based on their medical history. It will also enable us to provide consolidated, real-time data on market behaviour to manufacturers for increased profitability and better decision-making across the value chain.
Our PMR platform helps pharmacies and PPMVs manage their inventory and day-to-day operations so that they can focus on patient care. We’ve also incorporated a Buy-Now-Pay-Later service which means store owners can stock up and maximise the sales opportunities available to them. They only pay after the stock has been dispensed to customers.
We are just getting started
Pharmacies and PPMVs have been the frontline of healthcare in Africa for many years and we are excited to be innovating for them and connecting them more effectively to manufacturers to ensure that their data is reflected more accurately in decision making across the pharmaceutical value chain.
We are starting in Nigeria but this is just the beginning. We are just getting started on our mission to drive the digitization of Africa’s pharmaceutical sector. We want to thank our investors Global Ventures and Ventures Platform, as well as Ingressive Capital, Voltron Capital, Flutterwave’s Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, Victor Asemota, Opeyemi Awoyemi’s (Jobberman co-founder) Angel Syndicate Fund and other investors that participated in this round.
We are also looking forward to the support and network of partners that Y Combinator will expose us to, and the impact it will have on our business.
Stay tuned!!
