Originally established with a focus on industrial applications, Immensa shifted its attention to the energy sector in 2018. 

The energy sector, encompassing oil and gas, petrochemicals, power generation, and more, faces complex supply chain challenges. Large corporations like Equinor, ConocoPhillips, and Saudi Electricity Company hold significant spare parts inventories, often manufactured in regions distant from their headquarters. Immensa addresses this issue by leveraging additive manufacturing, enabling on-demand production of spare parts without the need for mass manufacturing hubs across the globe.

Immensa’s digital approach streamlines the traditional supply chain process. Clients can easily locate and order required parts online, which are then produced at the nearest qualified 3D printing facility. This eliminates the need for extensive shipping, reducing lead times, costs, and environmental impact.

Immensa focuses on simplifying offerings for large energy companies by assessing their physical warehouses and converting them into digital or virtual warehouses. This digitization allows for the production of parts on demand, significantly reducing the spare parts balance sheet for energy conglomerates.

Immensa claims to be the only company owning and controlling the entire digital supply chain of the energy sector. Operating on the DIS RT platform, the startup provides comprehensive solutions covering assessment, digitization, and production-on-demand, ensuring data security and quality control. With over 100 additive manufacturing specialists and engineers, Immensa also integrates proprietary AI tools into DIS RT, managing extensive data volumes for real-time information processing.

Over the past six years, Immensa has assessed over a million parts, producing more than 15,000 components. It started in the UAE and Kuwait, expanded into Saudi Arabia, and now serves clients across the Middle East, North Africa, and plans to enter North America. Major oil and gas conglomerates, including Aramco, Adnoc, and Schlumberger, are among its clientele.

The recent $20 million funding round, led by Global Ventures, will enable Immensa to become a global solutions provider, constructing the largest digital warehouse in the energy sector. The funds will also enhance DIS RT and fortify its AI tools. 

Immensa plans to strengthen its operations in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, expand into two additional regional countries within the next six months, and target North America within 12-18 months. Revenues for the startup reached over $10 million last year, with plans to double figures by the end of 2023. The funding round included participation from new backers such as Endeavor Catalyst Fund and EDGO, along with continued support from existing investors.

Yodawy will utilize the investment to bolster its expansion goal into markets in the Middle East and Africa, as the startup leverages new opportunities.

The fund will also help in the growth of its Care Program for chronic patients, which offers monthly medication refills to enrolled patients, and processes daily deliveries across 38 cities in Egypt. 

Global Ventures co-led the round with Delivery Hero Ventures, which has Yodawy as its first African investment. Other investors were Singapore-based AAIC Investment, Saudi’s Dallah Al-Baraka and existing investors such as Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), C Ventures, and P1 Ventures.

Yodawy enables pharmacies go digital so as to increase their customer reach and boost sales via its e-commerce offering. Insurance companies and hospitals can also automate approvals, save costs and improve customer experience through the platform. 

Yodawy’s offerings make it possible for patients to receive deliveries at their doorstep, while pharmaceuticals, leverages its network of pharmacies to ensure seamless consumer reach. 

Yodawy affirms to currently be the primary partner for the almost 300 corporates in the Egyptian market, and serves their patients – employees – needing chronic medication. The Giza-based health tech upstart, which employs a B2B2C model, has partnered with 20 health insurance companies and 500 doctors; 3,000 pharmacies have processed over 4 million prescriptions via individuals in these corporates. 

The company recently launched a flagship e-prescription gateway that lets physicians go paperless, with seven insurance companies and health management organizations participating in the program, resulting in more than 2,000 e-prescriptions generated daily. Its revenue has grown by 400% since its last priced round 18 months ago.

Included in Yodawy’s plans is the continuous automation of its operations, enabling prescription processing at a larger scale, and strengthening existing tech-enabled fulfilment capabilities to serve a rapidly growing base of patients.

Led by American Express (AMEX) Ventures, the strategic investment group of American Express and Global Ventures, a MENA-focused VC, the fund was raised from a group of international investors including Greycroft, Seedcamp, Plug and Play, Berrywood Capital and Breega.

Klasha is focused on helping merchants worldwide sell online to Africa and receive payments in local African currencies while enjoying super fast last-mile delivery to consumers across the continent.

Launched in 2021 and having a consumer base of about 45,000 customers, a 4x growth from last October, the startup serves businesses and consumers via its suite of products connected via one API. With its KlashaCheckout product, merchants outside Africa can collect payments from six countries including Nigeria, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa and Kenya. They get paid in G20 currencies such as dollars, pounds or euros. 

In these six countries, another of the startup’s products, KlashaWire, allows small merchants to pay suppliers in their local currencies, and these suppliers can also receive payments in their dominant currency within three days. Again, a third product, Payment Links enables merchants who don’t have storefronts to accept payments and share links with customers via email or social media.

The company affirms to be growing 20% month-on-month in merchant acquisitions and 17.5% in transaction volume. Klasha has processed more than 210,000 transactions from over 1,700 merchants. Its revenue is made via sales commissions and subscriptions paid by merchants to use the platform for analytics.

Last year, Klasha’s consumer product allowed users in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya to create virtual cards, fund with their respective currencies and send and receive money. In an interview, Jessica Anuna, the company’s Founder, said Klasha would revamp the app to help retailers such as ASOS, Zara and H&M accept payments from African consumers.

The app, dubbed KlashaCart — which is only available in Nigeria — will allow consumers to shop from different retailers using naira and get their items delivered within 7-14 days via Klasha’s logistics arm. The platform will go live in Kenya in the next couple of months. 

Remedial Health is on a mission to build tech-enabled, pharmacy-centred healthcare networks across the continent. The funds, as well as its participation in Y Combinator, will accelerate the fruition of its goal. 

“We are not only making it easier for neighbourhood pharmacies and PPMVs (patent and proprietary medicine vendors) to access affordable and authentic medicines from leading manufacturers. We are also rolling out our PMR (patient medical records) platform that will make them more efficient and profitable, and give them access to consolidated data on customers to support the delivery of better healthcare services across the continent,” Remedial Health wrote.

Transforming Africa’s pharmaceutical sector with technology solutions

In Africa’s $45 billion pharmaceutical industry — projected to reach $70 billion by 2030, PPMVs are responsible for 80 percent of sales. They are basically businesses without a trained pharmacist that sell pharmaceutical products on a retail basis for-profit and they provide the main source of medicines for many common illnesses. 

However, they have to navigate an opaque supply chain and a fragmented marketplace to access the stock they need for their stores which can make them very unprofitable. 

This also means manufacturers have limited visibility into their performance, leading to inefficient decision making on forecasting, production and distribution.

Remedial Health has created a digital procurement platform that makes it possible for store owners to source all the medicines, consumables and small medical devices for their practice via a mobile app or mobile responsive web store at open-air medicine market prices and have them delivered within 24 hours. All products are vetted before distribution to verify their authenticity.

The startup’s proprietary Patient Medication Records and Inventory Control (PMR) software, Remedial Rx also enables these store owners to build and access a consolidated database of customer information that will drive the delivery of improved healthcare services across the continent. 

“With our platform, it will be easier to make informed decisions on which products are best suited to a customer based on their medical history. It will also enable us to provide consolidated, real-time data on market behaviour to manufacturers for increased profitability and better decision-making across the value chain.”

Remedial Health’s PMR platform helps pharmacies and PPMVs manage their inventory and day-to-day operations so that they can focus on patient care. 

The healthtech has also incorporated a Buy-Now-Pay-Later service which means store owners can stock up and maximise the sales opportunities available to them. They only pay after the stock has been dispensed to customers.

Pharmacies and PPMVs have been the frontline of healthcare in Africa for many years and Remedial Health is innovating for them and connecting them more effectively to manufacturers, ensuring that their data is reflected more accurately in decision making across the pharmaceutical value chain.

“We are starting in Nigeria but this is just the beginning. We are just getting started on our mission to drive the digitisation of Africa’s pharmaceutical sector.”

Appreciating its investors, Remedial Health wrote: “We want to thank our investors Global Ventures and Ventures Platform, as well as Ingressive Capital, Voltron Capital, Flutterwave’s Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, Victor Asemota, Opeyemi Awoyemi’s (Jobberman co-founder) Angel Syndicate Fund and other investors that participated in this round.”

“We are also looking forward to the support and network of partners that Y Combinator will expose us to, and the impact it will have on our business.”