Carepoint, a tech-driven healthcare startup headquartered in Lagos has secured $10 million in bridge round to speed up its growth and make healthcare services more accessible to Africa’s teeming population.
The bridge round will give Carepoint a head start as it plans its entry into the North and East Africa’s market. This definitive step will be taken, given the startup’s fast-growing presence in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and more recently, Egypt, through mergers and acquisitions. The raiser will also be deployed to build data science and AI teams to strengthen its technological resources, in addition to introducing new products.
Leading the funding round was TRB Advisors and sums the amount raised by CarePoint since launch to $30 million. This round comes off the back of a $18 million series A round announced mid-November last year.
New and existing investors that took part in the bridge round include Delle, Breyer Capital, Beyond Capital Ventures (BVC), M3, Inc, Asia Pacific Land/ Natural World Limited, and Alan Waxman, who is Sixth Street Partners’ CEO.
Delle Sangu established the startup in 2017 to provide optimized healthcare services to patients 24/7. Banking on his experience at Golden Palm Investments, an earlystage-focused venture firm where he served as CEO, he was able to launch Carepoint steadily into a notable healthcare facility.
The startup offers a variety of medical services virtually through its MyCareMobile app which features consultancy with doctors, teleconferencing, delivery of test results virtually and a round-the-clock emergency response.
According to Delle, they are in the process of setting up telemedicine centers in their facilities and building “micro-tech-enabled-clinics” targeted at the masses. This will grow CarePoint’s, formerly known as Africa Health Holdings, portfolio beyond in-person visits.
“The micro-clinics will have, at most, 12 employees, including a nurse. The patients will consult with doctors virtually. We are taking this route because we realized that as much as the mobile subscription in Africa is great and growing, if you look at it from an internet penetration perspective, so many people are still locked out because they cannot afford mobile data,” said Delle.
“These clinics are a way of democratizing access and taking quality healthcare closer to the people while making it affordable to them too,” he said.
The startup is backed by five brands, including Sahe in Egypt, Meridian Health Group in Kenya, Rabito Clinic in Ghana and Nigeria’s Care Point, and Lilys Hospitals, all operating a total of 65 facilities.
Eva Yazhari, a general partner at BVC, said, “CarePoint is at the forefront of creating solutions through its three core pillars of a scaled network of healthcare facilities, a strong technology backbone, and patient-centered care highlighted by the first Africa-focused healthcare data repository.”
