Samuel Okwuada on what it really takes to build a Health-Tech company in Nigeria

As health-tech attracts growing attention from investors and entrepreneurs, building a healthcare technology company in Nigeria requires more than a good product. Samuel Okwuada, a pharmacist, software developer and founder of Y Combinator-backed Remedial Health, discusses the practical realities of building at the intersection of healthcare, technology and commerce. His company provides pharmacies and hospitals with pharmaceutical procurement, inventory management, financing and distribution solutions and, by 2023, reported serving more than 5,000 healthcare facilities across 34 Nigerian states. Excerpts.

What made you decide to build a health-tech company?

I understood the problem from both sides. I trained as a pharmacist, so I understood the realities pharmacies face when sourcing and managing medicines. At the same time, I had spent years building software businesses. I began to see that many of the inefficiencies in pharmaceutical distribution were problems technology could solve.

With Remedial Health, the goal was not simply to put medicines online. It was to improve the infrastructure around procurement, inventory, financing and distribution.

What is particularly difficult about building healthcare technology in Nigeria?

Healthcare is highly operational. You cannot build a product, put it online and assume adoption will follow.

You have to understand how pharmacies actually operate, how medicines move, how people pay, how regulation works and what happens when something goes wrong. The technology has to fit into those realities.

In our case, we had to build around procurement, inventory and financing rather than simply create another marketplace.

How important is logistics to a health-tech business like Remedial Health?

Extremely important. If you are dealing with physical healthcare products, technology is only one part of the equation. The product still has to get to the customer.

That means building reliable processes around fulfilment, distribution and delivery. By 2023, we were serving customers across 34 Nigerian states, so the challenge was no longer simply building a platform. It was making the entire system work reliably across different locations.

How do you manage regulation in such a sensitive sector?

You have to treat regulation as part of the product, not as something to deal with after building the product.

When you are operating in pharmaceuticals, there are standards around products, manufacturers, distribution and patient safety that cannot be compromised. Technology can help create better visibility and records, but the business has to be designed around the regulatory environment from the beginning.

What have you learned about fundraising?

Fundraising is not a substitute for building a business. Investors ultimately want to understand the problem, the size of the opportunity, the solution and whether the team can execute.

For us, the journey included Y Combinator and subsequent funding from investors including QED Investors, Ventures Platform, Y Combinator, Tencent and Gaingels. We raised $4.4 million in seed funding and later a $12 million Series A and equity-debt round.

But capital only becomes useful when you can deploy it against real operational problems and measurable growth.

What is the hardest part of hiring for a health-tech company?

Finding people who can operate in ambiguity.

You need people who are excellent at what they do, but who can also understand that building in an emerging market often means solving problems that do not have ready-made answers.

Healthcare also requires people who appreciate the consequences of getting things wrong. We therefore look for strong technical and functional skills, but also ownership, adaptability and the ability to work across disciplines.

How do you get traditional businesses to adopt technology?

You cannot ask customers to adopt technology simply because you think technology is exciting.

You have to solve a problem that matters to them.

For a pharmacy, that might mean easier procurement, better inventory visibility, access to financing or more reliable delivery. When the technology saves time, improves cash flow or makes the business easier to operate, adoption becomes much more natural.

Why is financing important to pharmacies?

Access to inventory is closely connected to access to capital. A pharmacy may know exactly what it needs to stock but still lack the working capital to purchase it.

That is why financing became an important part of our model. By 2023, more than 60 per cent of our customers were using inventory financing. We saw that financing could help pharmacies increase their purchasing capacity while giving them access to legitimate inventory.

What changes when you expand beyond Lagos and other major cities?

Everything becomes more operationally complex.

Distances are longer, supplier networks can be thinner and logistics become more difficult. But the need for reliable pharmaceutical supply does not disappear because a pharmacy is outside a major city.

Our experience serving customers across 34 states has reinforced the importance of building systems that can work beyond the largest commercial centres.

What have you learned most about building a technology company in Nigeria?

That execution matters as much as the idea.

Nigeria has enormous problems that technology can help solve, but the solutions have to work in the context in which they are being deployed. You need to understand customers deeply, build the right team, manage capital carefully and be prepared to solve operational problems every day.

For us, the opportunity is much bigger than building a pharmaceutical marketplace. We are trying to build infrastructure that makes the pharmaceutical supply chain more efficient.

That requires patience, technology and, above all, a willingness to keep solving the problems that customers actually face.