Nigerian Adebayo Alonge and his partner, Ankur Kapadia, want to create a secure drug pipeline in Africa with a new startup, called RxAll.
According to Adebayo, his encounter with fake drugs early in life, helped shaped his career leading him first into pharmacy and stints with both Swipha (formerly Roche Nigeria) and BASF in Africa
The team of Adebayo and Ankur, were the second admitted into the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute’s Global Social Venture Creation Program (VCP), receiving $2,200 in support from InnovateHealth Yale in addition to the $1,000 given to VCP teams by YEI. The program provides education, mentorship and guidance for early-stage teams looking to develop their ventures. They were also recently a finalist for InnovateHealth Yale’s Thorne Prize for Social Innovation in Health or Education.
“RxAll has developed a compelling way to tackle the very serious global problem of counterfeit medications,” says Martin Klein, Director of InnovateHealth Yale and Associate Dean for Development and External Affairs at Yale School of Public Health.
According to the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute, RxAll has completed a market study in Nigeria speaking to 50 pharmacists who have indicated a strong interest in buying from a secure online-based pipeline instead of the open market. They are also speaking to the Food and Drug Administration and looking to connect with a materials scientist at Yale to optimize the technology used to verify the drugs. They plan to begin with the region’s most common medications—antimalarials, antibiotics and chronic diabetes medications.
Money from the Global Social Venture Creation Program will help to support a pilot test of the ordering platform in Nigeria. “We want to see how many pharmacies would convert to the platform and get metrics around acquisition and cost,” Alonge says. They are also doing a second-stage market study, talking to local manufacturers, pharmacies and users.
Adebayo Alonge, an Alumnus of Lagos Business School is currently on the Master of Advancement Programme at Yale School of Management.
