MEDZnMORE has raised $11.5 million in pre-Series A funding round, making it the biggest such deal for any health-tech startup in Pakistan, it emerged on Thursday.
The deal is backed by Integra Partners, Nunc Gestion, Sturgeon Capital and Alta Semper. Other investors include AlTouq Group, ACE & Company, Key Family Partners, Reflect Ventures, Atlas Asset Management and a few angel investors. The startup was founded in late 2020 by Asad Khan, Saad Khawar and Babar Lakhani, and raised $2.6m in September that year. Currently, they are catering to both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) channels through TezMedz and Tabiyat.pk, respectively.
According to a press statement released by the company, over 40 per cent of all dispensed medicines in Pakistan are either spurious or have lost efficacy. MEDZnMORE is trying to solve this problem by improving the availability and ease-of-access to authentic medicines. The company partners with pharmaceuticals and their authorised distributors across Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad — where it runs its warehouses — to deliver genuine products to both patients and retail pharmacies, it said.
The startup claims to be growing around 42pc month-on-month since the past 12 months and now delivers over 100,000 products every day from its seven cold-chain enabled warehouses located across Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. Sturgeon Capital Chief Investment Officer Kiyan Zandiyeh noted that the MEDZnMORE team had demonstrated in a short time “a level of focus and quality of execution that has led to tremendous traction”.
“This combined with a clear vision of the product roadmap led us to believe that the company will be a category leader in the pharmaceutical market not only in Pakistan but the broader region. We’re proud to be invested in the company and excited for the journey ahead,” Zandiyeh said. The company’s chief executive officer, Asad Khan, said that their aim was to make health and wellness products available across all corners of the country.
“In a market of over 220m people, where public healthcare spending is only 1.2pc of the gross domestic product, and where 55pc of all healthcare spending is out-of-pocket, people generally rely on medicines to alleviate their suffering, rather than spend on prohibitively expensive medical procedures,” Khan said, adding that ensuring the accessibility of affordable and authentic medicines was essential.
Jinesh Patel, managing partner at Integra Partners, said: “Being an ESG (environmental, social and governance) investor, we found MEDZnMORE to share the same ideology of sustainability and social impact.” Patel said that the startup was solving some of the most pressing problems within the healthcare sector and had shown tremendous traction in a short amount of time. “We are excited to be backing the star team and are looking forward to being part of their journey as they reshape the Pakistani healthcare landscape,”
Source: This news is originally published by Dawn