Ghana-based mPharma, whose mission is to make prescription drugs accessible and affordable, has secured $9.729,000 in Series B funding.
Ghana-based mPharma, whose mission is to make prescription drugs accessible and affordable, has secured $9.729,000 in Series B funding. We are not yet sure of the investors that participated in the round but can confirm the figure basing on the companies SEC filing made five days ago.
According to the document, submitted on January 10, 2019, mPharma set out to raise $12 million, however, it came out short of the target by $2.271 million.
Founded in 2013, by Gregory Rockson, Daniel Shoukimas, and James Finucane, mPharma has now raised over $21.3 million in total funding. The company received an initial $5m from Social Capital in 2015 and Ashley Carroll, and Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital both joined the board the same year.
In 2016, they received a further $6m from the son of Indian industrialist Sunil Mittal, Shravin, who met Gregory at a World Economic Forum event in 2012.
It is highly likely that the company is looking to use the funding to expand to more countries as well as strengthen its operations in the markets where it is present currently.
Last year, in an interview with Gregory, the CEO, he told Digest Africa that the company had operations in Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, with over 208 pharmacies under their portfolio. (The number could have gone up since then). In the same month of November when we had the interview, the company had just launched a new initiative dubbed QualityRx.
QualityRx is aimed at saving pharmacies that are about to collapse. According to the company, QualityRx is “a pharmacy retailers cooperative that unites community pharmacies under one brand.” Through the initiative, “struggling pharmacy owners no longer need to face the difficult choice of closing down their pharmacies or selling to a pharmacy chain.”
Gregory said that QualityRx is “focused on re-innovating established mom and pop pharmacies that are at the verge of collapsing.”
Once accepted under the initiative, a couple of benefits await a pharmacy. One of them is the one access to up to US $10,000 in loans. Pharmacies can use the credit for either refurbishment or as working capital. The pharmacies also gain access to mPharma’s inventory and finance management solutions.
