Ghana based mPharma raises $6.6 million in Series A Funding

Ghana based mPharma has raised $6.6 million in Series A Funding. This story was first published and confirmed later by the CEO, Gregory Rockson in a series of tweets.

With this investment, lead investor, Shravin Bharti Mittal joins the mPharma board. Shravin is a director at Bharti Global Ltd. He played a critical role in the acquisition and integration of Zain, paving the way for Bharti Airtel to enter the African market.

One of the new investors is Breyer Capital. This is its 1st investment in the Africa technology ecosystem by participating in our Series A. Jim Breyer, the legendary venture capitalist and billionaire is joining our board as an observer. Jim was one of the earliest investors in Facebook, and he served on the company’s board for over 8 years.

According to Gregory,

2017 has been a tremendous year of growth for mPharma. As we enter 2018, we intend to focus on scaling our operations across Africa as we work towards building economies of scale in partnership with providers. When asked what mPharma is, I say, if CVS Health, QuintilesIMS, and McKesson had a baby, it would be called mPharma.

Our proprietary supply chain software enables us to implement vendor managed inventory for independent healthcare providers in Africa. This model enables mPharma to create a tightly coupled pharmacy monolith?—?on a continent that has a highly fragmented pharmacy retail market?—?with leverage over pricing, distribution and reimbursements. mPharma has created several different technological solutions for data collection: Thea, a CRM tool that gives facilities the ability to perform claim submission and management; SyncDB, an onsite integration that allows for a facility to automatically sync select parts of their database to mPharma’s integration layer; our integrations REST API that allows facilities to integrate with mPharma through HTTP; and an excel spreadsheets tool that a facility may use to keep track of their dispensations. mPharma’s collection process normalizes and unifies these disparate and distinct data sources into one cohesive data set which allows us to build a data driven supply chain infrastructure.

mPharma has grown its provider network to over 70 outlets across West and Southern Africa. The company serves more than 20,000 patients each month in cities like Lagos, Warri, Port Harcourt, Aba, Accra, Kumasi, Cape Coast, Lusaka and Ndola.

In September, mPharma announced a partnership with the Red Cross to open a chain of Red Cross pharmacies in vulnerable communities across Africa.The 1st pharmacy under this partnership will be opened in Zimbabwe next month.