Egypt’s Yodawy raises $7.5 million Series B for its digital pharmacy marketplace

Cairo-based healthtech Yodawy has raised $7.5 million in a Series B round led by Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), Global Ventures, and Algebra Ventures. Egypt’s CVentures, P1 Ventures, and Athaal Angel Investors Group, also participated in the deal.

Founded in 2018 by Karim Khashaba, Sherief El-Feky, and Yasser AbdelGawad, Yodawy has built a digital pharmacy marketplace that serves all the stakeholders of the healthcare ecosystem, including customers, insurance companies, pharmacies, doctors, and pharmaceutical/FMCG companies.

The customers can use the platform to order medicines and other healthcare products. Its pharmacy benefit management solution connects pharmacies, health insurance providers, and patients through a real-time AI-powered approval engine. The patients can use the offering by registering their insurance cards, request medicines, and receive instant approvals – after which the medicines are delivered at their doorstep.

Pharmacies use Yodawy to grow their sales by selling medicines online. It currently has over 3,000 pharmacies in its network and has delivered 800,000 orders to date. Yodawy’s insurance partners include eight leading insurance companies in Egypt, including Axa, MetLife, and MedNet.

The doctors can use a dedicated app (for doctors by Yodawy) to issue digital prescriptions for their patients, with details like dosage, frequency, and duration. They can also create prescription templates on the app for the most common types of cases and use them repetitively to save time.

Jad El Boustani, Managing Director of MEVP said that Yodawy is uniquely positioned to digitize the healthcare industry by connecting insurance companies, pharmacies, and patients in a seamless way. He also labeled Egypt as one of the most promising markets in MENA and said that MEVP looks forward to investing in more opportunities there.

Yodawy now plans to use the latest funds to introduce additional offerings and expand to new markets, said the company in a statement, without disclosing the names of markets it’s eying for expansion.

Karim Hussein, a Managing Partner at Algebra Ventures, Yodawy’s first backer, said, “Since our initial investment, Yodawy has created an innovative platform for delivering medication and managing claims throughout Egypt. Their unique digital services are essential to powering the next growth phase of health insurance in Egypt and similar emerging markets.”

Amal Enan, Managing Director of Global Ventures, added, “Yodawy is the only player with both B2C and B2B insurance and pharma products and holds a leading market position with its end-to-end offerings. The business has been hugely successful in Egypt, and we are looking forward to supporting Yodawy as it enters new markets in the MENA region, and beyond.”