Nigeria’s Remedial Health has raised $1 million in a pre-seed financing round led by Global Ventures and Ventures Platform. Remedial Health brings technology into operations relating to pharmacy, digitalizing pharmacies as well as helping to reduce the spread of fake and substandard pharmaceutical products. The financing round saw the participation of other investors including 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.
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.
One of the major drivers for the shift or change that Remedial Health made in its business was the Coronavirus pandemic. Customers started making orders for products that were out of its private-label offering, and to meet up with this emerging demand, it developed a patient medication records (PMR) system to streamline its ordering process. This made sourcing for products easy and eventually digitalized pharmacies.
Thanks to its PMR system, Remedial Health assists pharmacies with managing their operations, making and tracking orders which are completed within 24 hours, and storing patients’ medical records. “For those using the system, because we can basically see their shelves, we are solving their 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”, Remedial Health explained.
Remedial Health has also got non-users of its PMR system covered. Its online shop gives pharmacies outside its platform the ability to make orders via its app. Like online shopping, ordering for pharmaceutical products are made easier and these pharmacies do not have to worry about stocking fake or substandard products.
“We don’t force everyone to use the system because we don’t assume that every single pharmacy has a computer and constant power supply. And because we know that the major problem is supply, we make it possible for them to access the procurement system on their phones”, the platform explains.
This system employed by Remedial Health gives it accurate inventory monitory, which stocks are in high or low demand in different pharmacies and knowing how to redirect these products.
Remedial Health sources its pharmaceutical products from at least 100 pharmaceutical manufacturers and suppliers including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, GSK, Orange Drugs, Fidson Healthcare and Emzor. Currently operational in six Nigerian states, Remedial Health has plans of expanding within Nigeria and taking over West Africa. It plans to enter new African markets before this year comes to an end.
Currently, the platform serves about 300 pharmacies that are making orders through its app and others ordering through WhatsApp. The platform which provides last-mile delivery does this through its in-house logistics operation and partners.
Remedial Health also provides credit facilities that allow its customers to pay for their orders later. “The pharmacies don’t have to pay for products upfront; in some cases, they pay deposits, maybe 20%, and then pay the balance over time, but depending on how well we’ve known them, it can even be 100% financing”, Remedial Health says.
A part of the funding will be used to develop its buy-now-pay-later offering so as to allow more pharmacies to be able to tap into the offer.
Remedial Health’s financing round follows a week after Reliance Health, another Nigerian healthtech, secured $40 million in a Series B financing round led by General Atlantic.