Earlier this year, Nigeria’s Remedial Health got $1 million in a pre-seed financing round led by Global Ventures and Ventures Platform, with participation from other investors such as Ingressive Capital, Voltron Capital, Opeyemi Awoyemi’s (Jobberman co-founder) Angel Syndicate Fund, and other angel investors, including Flutterwave’s Olugbenga “GB” Agboola and Victor Asemota. The health-tech startup announced plans to enter into new African territories, as well as to develop its buy-now-pay-later offering, following its seed round.
Remedial Health has secured $4.4 million in an equity seed round led by Global Ventures. Other participants include Tencent, Y Combinator, Cathexis Ventures, LightSpeed Venture Partners Scout Fund, Ventures Platform, Alumni Ventures, and True Capital Management, and a number of angel investors Guillaume Luccisano and Christopher Golda.
Remedial Health was founded in 2020 by Pharmacist and self-taught software developer Samuel Okwuada and pharmaceutical field sales agent Victor Benjamin. When the company started, it operated as a private business and focused on contract-manufactured products from other countries, especially India. Remedial Health would then sell these products in Nigeria. But the founders believed that Remedial Health could be bigger. “That business was pretty small. But at least we were in the market and we were growing”, Samuel Okwuada said. Today the startup makes it easy for pharmacies to source products from major manufacturers and distributors including big names like Pfizer, GSK, AstraZeneca, Emzor, Orange Drugs, etc.
Between February (when it had its last funding round) and now, Remedial Health has grown its presence from being available in six states to 16 states in Nigeria. The plan is to cover the remaining 20 and strengthen its operations across Nigeria. This is where the latest funding comes in. The startup will also be chasing growth opportunities in East and other parts of West Africa.
According to CEO Samuel Okwuada, since the start of the year, Remedial Health has experienced near-meteoric growth thanks to an increase in usage of its digital offering, buy-now-pay-later products, and its efforts at expansion.“We have seen more than 6x growth in the number of customers on our platform since January. The feedback we constantly receive about what they like the most about our platform is around the ease and efficiency of our inventory finance offering, the variety of products they can access on our platform, and the effectiveness of our procurement process – wherever our customers are based in Nigeria, they typically receive their orders within 24 hours,” he said.
He also added that “The launch of our inventory finance product has also attracted more customers to our platform, as they have been able to take advantage of it to grow their businesses and navigate the challenge of rising prices. More than 60 percent of our customers use the inventory finance product and we have seen more than 50 percent growth in their average basket size since we launched the product.”
Remedial Health’s digital offering envelopes a digital procurement platform that allows pharmacies to manage their operations by making and tracking orders, supports financial reporting and accounting, as well as provides real-time market intelligence needed to make decisions. Its PMR system provides pharmacies with access to patients’ medical data. Other offerings include an app that non-PMR users can use to prevent stocking fake or substandard products.
“The market opportunity to serve community pharmacies across Africa is significant. In Nigeria alone, 500,000 community pharmacies drive over 80% of a 70-billion-dollar market in annual pharmaceutical sales. The team at Remedial Health is proactively addressing challenges including price opacity, poor drug quality control, and a very fragmented supply chain through a tech-enabled, pharmacy-centered healthcare network that has allowed over 25% in cost reductions at the point of care,” Global Ventures Principal, Sacha Haider said commenting on the funding round.
Ibhadojemu Lucky Emmanuel is a graduate of Education and Economics from the University of Benin. He has a passion for tech and business and has been writing professionally for over a period of five years. He's written across various topics and segments and knew tech-business was it when he first stumbled on it. He has a great passion for music and arts, and wants to visit as many countries as he can someday.
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