One thing countries worldwide have realized is that they need to step up the health infrastructure in their region, which has been realized by some of the best countries in the world, such as the US, China, and parts of Europe. This is because the pandemic has shown them an accurate picture of their healthcare capacities and how much they can handle at a time when such a pandemic arrives. Although this pandemic was a once-in-a-century event, we know that things will be even more difficult with how viruses are mutating and coming out suddenly.
There is still a worry about healthcare all around the world, which is in its affordability part because even though the government covered the pandemic’s healthcare cost, it is not the case with general healthcare all over the world. The countries with the best healthcare infrastructure and providing them for free to their citizens did the best in handling the pandemic well. Now, we have companies working to make healthcare affordable country by country, and in Egypt, we have Yodawy, which has just raised $16 Million in a Series B round.
Egypt is said to be one of the largest producers in the pharmaceutical sector in the Middle East and North African region, with its value close to reaching $6 Billion this year. Yodawy also solves another problem in the MENA region, which is that 90% of the insurance and prescriptions are written on paper, making room for error extraordinarily high. Also, the country has long queues at medical stores and pharmacies.
Yodawy wants to solve this problem by allowing hospitals and insurance companies to improve customer experience and save costs by automating approvals and providing pharmacies an online presence so that not everyone needs to buy their medicines offline. The exciting part here is that Yodawy has one thing that has not been added to the platform, and that is last-mile medicine delivery, which many startups are already doing. So the investment round led by Delivery Hero is also strategic. It looks like Delivery Hero will start delivering Yodawy products in the MENA region sooner rather than later once this round is secured.
