Egyptian Healthtech Chefaa Raises Undisclosed Investment
Egyptian patient-centred pharmacy benefits platform using AI to improve health services, Chefaa, has raised a funding round from Newtown Partners, Global Brain and GMS Capital Partners.
The undisclosed round is part of Chefaa’s journey to further expand its network, support the release of its Chefaa Prime product, a complete medical insurance alternative designed for emerging markets and launch officially in new markets.
The online pharmacy was founded in 2017 by Doaa Aref and Dr. Rasha Rady. The startup focuses on chronic patients with repeat orders but its platform is also open for anyone with a prescription to order their medicines.
Llew Claasen, Managing Partner at Newtown Partners said: “We have found Chefaa to be compelling for its proven ability to scale across geographies, impressive traction and growth across MENA, a strong female-led team with extensive healthcare and pharmaceutical expertise, a large, engaged base of customers, as well as strong alignment with our pharmaceutical eCommerce thesis and their ability to digitise healthcare interfaces.”
Yasuhiko Yurimoto, founder, CEO and General Partner at Global Brain said, “There is usually a challenge to meet patient needs particularly when it comes to medicine. We believe that Chefaa’s approach of growth, which is an opportunity to enhance medical literacy through freemium service and employee benefits, is the right way and contributes to one of the severe national health problems; a shortage of providing optimum care for chronic patients.”
Doaa Aref, CEO and Founder of Chefaa spoke on the importance of the round to Chefaa’s growth.
“From the start, we focused on empowering Chefaa’s ability to measure the impact of every step it takes with real data, not just for funding but for execution and scaling as well. I believe this venture round is pivotal not because it will only help us scale our validated business models, but because it will also help us capitalise on untapped market opportunities,” said Aref.
The round will be used to fund Chefaa efforts to digitise chronic illness management through a comprehensive approach to achieve measurable improvement in chronic patients’ quality of life.