LifeBank, Nigeria’s digital blood bank, has raised $200 000 for expansion nationwide.
Investors in this seed round include EchoVC Partners, a Lagos-based venture capital firm and Fola Laoye, an angel investor with over 20 years of experience in Nigeria’s healthcare industry. Co-Creation also participated in this funding round.
Before this funding, Co-Creation Hub supported LifeBank in its early stages with $25,000 in pre-seed funding, and the company also raised a further $15,000 from a private investor.
Currently present in the commercial city of Lagos, the company plans to extend its services to Abuja and Kaduna.
LifeBank is a smart blood system saving lives in Lagos by speeding up blood donations and deliveries to hospitals. The company earns money from charging a fee for delivery.
According to Temie Giwa-Tubosun, founder of LifeBank, the company has moved 9,003 pints of blood, saved 3564 lives, 1188 hospital orders and $360,000 worth of products since inception.
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In an interview with Quartz, she said “While it has predominantly worked with private sector partners in Lagos, launching in northern Nigeria where private health services aren’t as abundant as in Nigeria’s major southern cities will give the business crucial experience in working in a public-sector led market.”
“It’s increasingly clear that to get a significant chunk of the market we have to work with government systems. We want to use Kaduna as a model of what we can do in that market,” she adds.
