Yodawy secures $16M Series B to drive e-pharmacy adoption in Africa

Co-founded in 2018 by Karim Khashaba and Yasser AbdelGawad, Yodawy 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. Pharmaceuticals, on the other hand, can tap into Yodawy's network of pharmacies to put products in the hands of consumers.

Since its launch, the Egypt-based company has partnered with 20 health insurance companies and 500 doctors, and 3,000 pharmacies have processed over 4 million prescriptions via individuals in these corporates.

"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," Khashaba told Tech Crunch.

To drive e-pharmacy adoption in Africa and the Middle East, Yodawy has secured $16 million in a Series B round co-led by Delivery Hero Ventures and Global Ventures. Existing investors who participated in the digital healthcare’s $7.5 million Series A round in 2019 include Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), C Ventures, and P1 Ventures also invested in this round. With this latest funding, Yowady has raised a total of $24.5 million.

The proceeds will fuel the growth of Yodawy's signature Care Programme for Chronic patients—offering monthly medication refills to enrolled patients and processing daily deliveries, nationwide, across 38 cities in Egypt. The company will continue to automate its operations, which will enable prescription processing at a larger scale, and bolster existing tech-enabled fulfilment capabilities to serve a rapidly growing base of patients. Beyond Egypt, Yodawy will also ring-fence part of the proceeds to finance its regional expansion.

"Our focus on products that solve fundamental challenges in the sector has enabled the company to become the leading digital pharma powerhouse in Egypt and the partner of choice for insurance companies and payers at large," CEO Khashaba. "Yodawy will continue to invest heavily in building one of the most inclusive and sophisticated pharma value chains across the Middle East and Africa’s $100 billion pharma market."

The healthtech recently launched a flagship e-prescription gateway that lets physicians 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 company’s revenue has grown by 400% since it was last priced around 18 months ago.