Yodawy, a pharmacy benefits platform launched in 2018 aiming to restructure the medication supply chain in Egypt, has raised a $16 million Series B round in its expansion of getting pharmaceuticals across the Middle East and Africa.
Yodawy’s platform allows insurance companies and hospitals to automate approvals, save costs and improve customer experience. Also, pharmacies get an online presence and boost sales via the platform’s e-commerce offering
UAE-based and MEA-focused venture capital firm Delivery Hero Ventures and Singapore-based AAIC Investment, Saudi’s Dallah Al-Baraka, and existing investors in the digital healthcare’s $7.5 million Series A round in 2019, namely; Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), C Ventures, and P1 Ventures participated in this round of funding.
Karim Khashaba, the CEO and Co-founder of Yodawy, told TechCrunch that the health tech startup plans to optimize the investment by broadening the markets across the Middle East and Africa, where the pharma market is a $60 billion market opportunity.
He however added to the cause of the investment by saying;
We have built a strong network of insurance partners and employer-led medical schemes. We pretty much manage the end-to-end value chain of prescriptions, from how prescriptions are generated digitally on the doctor’s side to how payers process prescriptions, all the way to kind of a complete fulfilment infrastructure that currently manages the delivery of almost 200,000 prescriptions monthly across 30 cities in Egypt.
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The start of Yodawy’s journey, its achievements and weaknesses.
The beginning.
Yodawy’s journey in Egypt started in 2018 when Karim Khashaba founded the company with COO Yasser AbdelGawad and CTO Sherief El-Feky.
They established an infrastructure that accommodates the services of its partners like insurance companies, medical providers, pharmacies, and pharmaceutical/FMCG companies. The core purpose of this establishment is to connect them with business clients and individuals.
The achievements.
Yodawy recently launched a flagship e-prescription gateway which allows physicians to go paperless, with seven insurance companies and health management organizations participating in the program, resulting in more than 2,000 e-prescriptions generated daily.
The Egyptian company is the only full-fledged pharmacy benefit manager anchored by tech to manage the end-to-end prescription cycle, either creating an e-prescription gateway for hospitals and doctors or an approval automation engine for insurance companies.
Its priced revenue has appreciated by 400% in the last 18 months. Through this milestone, it has secured its place as the current primary partner for most corporate pharmaceutical companies in the Egyptian market, which is about 300 in number, serving their patients (employees) needing chronic medication.
Its platform allows insurance companies and hospitals to automate approvals, save costs and improve customer experience. Also, pharmacies get an online presence and boost sales via Yodawy’s e-commerce offering, which patients (via employer-led medical schemes) can benefit from as they get their medicines and drugs delivered to their doorsteps.
The challenges.
Despite the Egyptian company achieving some noticeable developments since it was established, there are also some weaknesses.
Yodawy’s stakeholders face prescription errors because more than 90% of Egypt’s prescriptions and insurance claims are recorded with paperand this sabotages every player in that value chain, from issues ranging from prescription errors to long processing times and queues at pharmacies and hospitals.
It also lacks last-mile capabilities. Its investment from Delivery Hero Ventures is strategic because the digital healthcare startup could explore some form of partnership with Delivery Hero to handle that integral bit of its business.
What is Yodawy saying?
According to Yodawy’s statement, the investment proceeds will fuel the growth of its signature Care Program for chronic patients, which offers monthly medication refills to enrolled patients and processes daily deliveries across 38 cities in Egypt.
Also, this will help to serve a rapidly growing patient base as the company intends to continue to automate its operations, enable larger-scale prescription processing, and strengthen existing tech-enabled fulfilment capabilities.
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