Afrigather 
Nigeria has a long-standing battle with counterfeit medicine. In 2002, a research by the Nationwide Company for Meals and Drug Administration and Management (NAFDAC) discovered that almost 41% of prescription drugs within the nation had been counterfeit. Twenty years on, over 70% of medical drugs being dispensed in Nigeria today are substandard. Counterfeit medicine deplete Nigerians’ belief within the nation’s healthcare system, sabotage the native pharmaceutical trade, compromise the treatment of diseases, and kill people.
Whereas there have been efforts by the Federal Government to unravel this downside, the pharmaceutical trade nonetheless wants extra options. Remedial Health is a Nigerian well being tech startup offering know-how options to this downside in 16 Nigerian states.
Based in 2021 by Samuel Okwuada and Victor Benjamin, Remedial Well being gives digital procurement and PMR (affected person remedy information) platforms that make it simpler for neighbourhood pharmacies, PPMVs, and hospitals to entry reasonably priced and genuine retail medicines. Healthcare suppliers can supply vetted drugs and obtain them inside 24 hours by way of Remedial Well being’s logistics community. The startup additionally gives pharmacies and PPMVs credit score to fund stock purchases and supply loans and wage advances for workers. Remedial Well being is backed by Y-Combinator (YC), a startup incubator, to which Okwuada attributes the startup’s fast progress.
Throughout the COVID-19 lockdown, hospitals that wanted medicine couldn’t entry them because of the markets being shut down. On a name with TechCabal, Okwuada, the CEO, stated that the demand he witnessed for medication throughout COVID as an importer of prescription drugs in Nigeria impressed the beginning of Remedial Well being.
Because it began operations, Remedial Well being has bought 50 million particular person packs of medication, based on Okwuada. He added that reaching this milestone has been tough for the startup as a result of they needed to construct the infrastructure they use and are presently working in a sector that doesn’t have fastened rules.
On account of its credit score services, the startup faces the danger of high rates of impairment charges that plague financial institutions in Nigeria. When requested about Remedial Well being’s plans for minimising this danger, Okwuada instructed TechCabal that the startup’s stock financing mannequin and the truth that it operates within the B2B sector have helped it attain a compensation charge of 97.5%. He added that Remedial Well being indicators a contract with its clients that allows it to retrieve items to the worth of the quantity being owed, although it has by no means had to do that.
The startup has now raised $4.4 million in seed funding to speed up its growth throughout Nigeria and to supply entry to credit score for stock purchases for neighbourhood pharmacies, proprietary patent medicine vendors (PPMVs), and hospitals within the nation. It was current in 6 states firstly of the 12 months and is now in 16 states, but it surely needs to develop throughout the nation and broaden to East and West Africa by 2023.
In a press launch on the elevate, Okwuada stated, “Neighbourhood pharmacies and PPMVs have the potential to be the face of a thriving healthcare system in Africa, and we imagine that know-how can play a major position in making this imaginative and prescient a actuality. The funds that we’ve got raised and the strategic assist from our traders will allow us to ship the options to handle varied challenges which have hampered these companies’ progress for a few years and make it simpler to safeguard lives and livelihoods throughout the continent for years to come back”.
The seed funding spherical was led by International Ventures, who re-invested after collaborating within the earlier spherical. Different traders had been Tencent, Y Combinator, Cathexis Ventures, LightSpeed Enterprise Companions Scout Fund, Ventures Platform, Alumni Ventures, and True Capital Administration. Angel traders resembling Guillaume Luccisano and Christopher Golda additionally participated within the fund.
In what was an oversubscribed seed spherical, Okwuada stated that Remedial Well being used three standards to type for traders. The standards used had been the attain of the traders, the traders’ curiosity in Africa (42% of global seizures of counterfeit drugs are made in Africa), and curiosity in social profit.
On Friday, the twenty third of September, TechCabal in partnership with Moniepoint (by TeamApt) will host crucial gamers in tech and enterprise on and off the continent to debate the way forward for commerce in Africa. Register now to attend.
