Remedial Health, a YC backed Nigerian healthtech startup, has closed a $1 million pre-seed investment.
The round was led by Global Ventures and Ventures Platform, with participation from 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 funding will go into digitising pharmacies, and combating the supply of fake and substandard pharmaceutical products in Nigeria. Part of the new funding will be used to extend the startup’s buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) service.
Founded in 2020 by Samuel Okwuada and Victor Benjamin, Remedial Health improve business to business access to medicines by providing such medicines from manufactures/registered distributors direct to large and small healthcare retail businesses (large pharmacies and remote chemist/PPMVs (Patent and Proprietary Medicine Vendors) using technology to deliver just-in-time stock and provide financing and a wide selection of inventory to such retail business. The company started off as a private label business, focused on contract manufactured products from markets like India, which they would then sell to pharmacies in Nigeria.
Remedial Health’s system allows pharmacies to manage their operations, make and track orders – which the startup says it fulfills within 24 hours. Additionally the platform stores patients’ medical records and supports reporting and accounting.
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. They are also planning to extend their reach in the regions that they are currently in.
The startup sources its products from over 100 pharmaceutical manufacturers and suppliers, including GSK, Pfizer and Astrazeneca, as well as Nigeria’s Orange Drugs, Emzor and Fidson Healthcare.
To date, the company has over 300 pharmacies making orders through its app, and a number of others using WhatsApp. It also extends credit to pharmacies with plans to expand the coverage of this financing service.
Commenting, founder and CEO Samuel Okwuada said: “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.”
Okwuada adds: “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.”
