By Onome Amuge.
Remedial Health, a Nigerian healthtech startup that develops solutions for the development of Africa’s pharmaceutical value chain, has secured $12 million in an equity and debt funding round to deepen its footprint in Nigeria and support the delivery of targeted financial services to drive business growth across the country’s pharmaceutical sector.
The $8 million Series A equity funding round was led by US-based venture capital firm, QED Investors and co-led by Ventures Platform, which Business A.M gathered, has now invested in Remedial Health at every funding round since the pre-seed stage. The investment also represents Ventures Platform’s first Series A investment.Other investors include Ycombinator, Tencent and Gaingels who have participated in previous rounds.
Meanwhile, the additional $4 million debt funding was led by a consortium of local and international financial institutions.
Remedial Health is optimistic the new funding will enable its tech-enabled solutions to get better penetration across Nigeria and deliver more game changing solutions to drive greater efficiency across the pharmaceutical value chain. This is expected to also optimise the startup’s operations at the intersection of healthcare, supply chain management, technology and financial services, delivering the digital procurement infrastructure to power effective healthcare distribution for Africa’s 1.2 million pharmacies.
Samuel Okwuada, CEO and co-founder of Remedial Health, expressed delight to have raised the funds, particularly with the wider context of the global funding downturn and the wide range of economic headwinds in Nigeria.
Okwuada explained that the startup’s continued growth has put us in a strong position to deliver its mission of creating a tech-enabled, pharmacy-centred healthcare network, adding that it is looking forward to leveraging the funds to achieve more success.
According to Gbenga Ajayi, partner, head of Africa, QED Investors, the success that Remedial Health has enjoyed to date is an indication of the market gap that exists, and the value they provide in providing effective holistic services to thousands of pharmacies across Nigeria.
“QED is particularly excited about the embedded financial services opportunities within the vertical — the ability to provide payments, embedded lending and other fintech solutions to this underserved but very crucial sector,” he said.
Ajayi also noted that the Remedial Health team is perfectly positioned to address the challenges in the pharmaceutical sector because of its unique positioning as a partner across the entire pharmaceutical value chain and the unique backgrounds of the founders as both seasoned phama operators and technology professionals.
“We are very excited to be on this journey and to support this next phase of the company and to bring our fintech DNA to bear in what is an already positive growth journey,” he added.
On his part, Kola Aina, founding partner of Ventures Platform, said the discovery fund is incredibly proud to have been part of Remedial Health’s journey since the earliest phase of the company’s development.
Aina emphasised that Remedial Health’s dedication to improving Nigeria’s pharmaceutical value chain is critical and their success in securing the $12 million funding demonstrates their remarkable growth and the management’s tenacity over the years.
“Our investment in this round represents our continued belief in their mission to deliver financial services to neighbourhood pharmacies and drive deeper growth in the pharmaceutical sector,”he said.
