Egyptian health tech Yodaway raises $16 million backed by Delivery Hero Ventures • TechCrunch

Image Credits: Yodawai

Without appropriate government-led public health initiatives, health care costs, including insurance and pharmaceutical costs, can burden individuals and families. In recent years, private institutions have played a major role in providing medical insurance and medicines through Egypt, the largest pharmaceutical producer in the MENA region, where the pharmaceutical market is estimated to reach $6 billion. This year’s price. Global Ventures-backed Yodaway is one such private player, and the pharmacy benefits manager has raised a $16 million Series B round.

The UAE-based and MEA-based venture capital firm has now led this round alongside Delivery Hero Ventures, the global food delivery platform that has now made its first check in Africa. Singapore-based AAIC Investments and Saudi Arabia’s Dallah Al Baraka participated in this round. In the year Existing investors Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), C Ventures and P1 Ventures doubled down on Digital Healthcare’s $7.5 million Series A round in 2019.

Co-founder and CEO Karim Kashaba told TechCrunch that the health tech startup plans to expand its investments in the Middle East and African markets, where the pharma market is a $60 billion market opportunity. Yodawai’s Egyptian journey began in 2018 when Kashaba founded the company with COO Yasser AbdelGawad and CTO Sherief El-Feky. They have built an infrastructure that accommodates the services of its partners – insurance companies, medical providers, pharmacies and pharmaceutical / FMCG companies – and connects them with business customers and individuals.

Here’s an example that highlights the dilemma every Yodawai stakeholder faces. More than 90% of Egyptian prescription and insurance claims are filed on paper. While that sounds simple, this affects every player in the value chain, from prescription errors to long processing times and issues at pharmacies and hospitals.

Yodaway’s platform enables insurance companies and hospitals to automate approvals, save costs and improve the customer experience. Also, pharmacies gain an online presence and boost sales through Yodaway’s e-commerce offering, where patients (with employer-led medical practices) can avail of their medications and prescriptions delivered to their homes. Pharmaceuticals, on the other hand, can enter Yodaway’s network of pharmacies to get products into the hands of consumers.

“We have built strong insurance partners and employer-led medical systems. We manage the end-to-end value chain of prescriptions, from how prescriptions are created digitally by physicians, to how payers process prescriptions, to a complete infrastructure that manages the supply of nearly 200,000 prescriptions.” “Every month in 30 cities in Egypt,” the CEO said on the call.

He is currently the primary partner of many corporations in the Egyptian market, about 300 in number, and is a chronic medicine that serves their patients (employees). The Giza-based health tech upstart, which employs a B2B2C model, has partnered with 20 health insurance companies and 500 doctors, with 3,000 pharmacies processing more than 4 million prescriptions for individuals in these corporations. Meanwhile, Yodaway recently launched a flagship e-prescribing portal that allows doctors to go paperless, with seven insurance companies and health management organizations participating in the program, generating more than 2,000 e-prescriptions per day. The company’s revenue has grown 400% since its last valuation round 18 months ago.

“The pharmaceutical value chain is very complex, and we need to build the ability to streamline the process [and] Additional products for insurance companies and doctors. Therefore, we serve doctors with an electronic prescription gateway and have created a huge interest in converting handwritten prescriptions to e-prescriptions,” said the CEO.

“This leads us to the second product, which is an approval engine currently being used by about 10 insurance companies in the market, which replaces old manual approval processes with an engine that can approve in real time. 80 percent of the decisions made on behalf of the insurance back office.

A few e-pharmacy providers in Egypt serve different types of businesses and customers, such as PharmacyMarts, Chefaa, and Vezeeta (one of its offerings). In sub-Saharan Africa, the likes of mPharma, Lifestores and Drugstoc come up in the conversation. But Kashaba Yodawai is the only complete pharmacy benefit manager powered by tech that manages the end-to-end prescription cycle – e-prescription entry for hospitals and doctors or an automated approval engine for insurance companies – and fulfillment.

What Yodawai lacks, however, is last-mile capabilities. The investment from Delivery Hero Ventures is strategic as the digital healthcare startup may explore some form of partnership to do business with Delivery Hero.

In addition to expanding in the Middle East and Africa, the investment will accelerate the growth of Yodaway’s signature care program for critical patients, which provides patients with monthly drug refills and daily delivery in 38 cities in Egypt. . The company plans to automate operations, streamline prescription processing and strengthen existing technology-enabled refill capabilities to serve its rapidly growing patient base.

“We continue to be impressed with the way they’ve done it. [Yodawy] Nur Swed, Managing Partner of Global Ventures, explains why her firm led the startup round in Series A. “This has translated into their ability to serve more than 50,000 recurring chronic patients each month and save more than 100,000 monthly hours of waiting in line to receive essential medications.”

DeliveryHero Ventures managing partner Brendan Blackyer, who will join Yodaway’s board, added that the firm was drawn to the Egyptian health technology company “with a clear vision to transform the pharma industry in the MENA region.” This latest round of funding brings the four-year-old company’s total capital to $24.5 million.