Cairo-based digital pharmacy start-up Grinta has grabbed $8 million in an early funding round to scale its technology platform and accelerate its growth across Egypt.
The seed round was co-led by Saudi Arabia’s Raed Ventures and NClude, an Egyptian fintech fund managed by Dubai-based Global Ventures.
Grinta CEO and co-founder, Mohamed Azab, said: “As we plan to expand our footprint in the main pharma hubs on the continent, we will also enable Egyptian and regional pharma manufacturers to further penetrate the $50 billion African market.”
The latest funding will also be used to expand the company’s workforce of 300 employees.
Grinta is a managed marketplace that modernises the pharmaceutical supply chain by empowering independent pharmacies. The end-to-end platform allows for seamless access to the full spectrum of traceable pharmaceutical and medical products from various vendors.
Founding general partner at Nclude, Eslam Darwish, said: “We’re excited to partner with Grinta to help enable their vision of delivering customer-centric, data-driven, and fintech-enabled solutions to modernize the pharmaceutical supply chain in Egypt and beyond.
“We look forward to supporting the Grinta team on their journey to build a digital and cashless bridge between underserved individual pharmacy owners and all stakeholders across the pharma value chain.”
Since its inception in late 2021, Grinta has been resiliently striving to make pharmaceuticals more accessible and affordable across Egypt and Africa.
Today, Grinta has more than 14,000 registered pharmacies and around 20,000 stock-keeping units on its platform and has delivered more than 100,000 orders in the past year.
Partner at Raed Ventures, Wael Nafee, said that the venture capital fund is proud to double down on Grinta’s “exceptional team of serial healthcare entrepreneurs on a mission to improve access to and affordability of medicines in Egypt and Africa”.
“By empowering pharmacies to be more efficient, fixing a broken supply chain end-to-end and partnering with all stakeholders in the value-chain they will realise this vision,” said Mr Nafee.
