Nigeria’s Remedial Health, a startup providing financing and supply chain management solution has received $1 million in pre-seed funding to digitize pharmacies in Nigeria and across Africa whilst also expanding the startup’s buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) offering.
The round was led by Global Ventures and Ventures Platform and also saw participation from Ingressive Capital, Voltron Capital, Opeyemi Awoyemi’s (Jobberman co-founder) Angel Syndicate Fund, and other angel investors, including Flutterwave’s Olugbenga Agboola and Victor Asemota.
Remedial is part of the Winter 2022 cohort of Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator accelerator and wants to solve supply issues for pharmacies by making sure that they get products when they need them with its online shop which allows pharmacies to make orders through an app.
What the startup is saying about the funding
Beyond wanting to correct supply chain challenges, Remedial Health wants to bring primary healthcare closer to people. Samuel Okwuada said, “These pharmacies are less than a 15-minute walk from people’s houses, and I feel that is the way to transform healthcare in Africa –By adding diagnostic services, and a doctor to these neighborhood pharmacies — by literally bringing everything to the people, we would really transform healthcare in Africa.”
The startup says it operates a 24 hours service to allows pharmacies to manage their operations, make and track orders and also stores patients’ medical records and supports reporting and accounting.
He added, “We are solving pharmacies supply issues by ensuring that they’re getting the products when they need them. And so they don’t have to go to the market and waste time by going through 20 to 30 individual distributors to buy all the medicines and supplies that they need.”
What you should know
- The startup was founded by Samuel Okwuada and Victor Benjamin in 2020 and started as a private label business.
- Joining other notable startups like; Kenya’s MyDawa, Ghana’s mPharma and Nigeria’s DrugStoc, in the space, Remedial health wants to solve inefficiencies and fragmentation in leading to the proliferation in markets of fake and substandard products.
- Remedial Health currently covers six states with plans to expand across the west African country, and to enter additional African markets before the end of the year.
- The startup sources its products from over 100 pharmaceutical manufacturers and suppliers, including GSK, Pfizer and Astrazeneca, including Nigeria’s Orange Drugs, Emzor and Fidson Healthcare.
