Easily the most funded healthtech startup in Africa, and a strong example of the success of telemedicine on the continent, Egyptian digital healthcare platform, Vezeeta, has added a deal breaker — an ePharmacy solution — barely a month after launching its first sub-Saharan operations in Kenya. The new ePharmacy solution will allow users to order prescription medications through the Vezeeta mobile app.
“We first digitally integrated doctors within our healthcare ecosystem, and now we are doing the same for pharmacists,” said Maha Melhem, Vice President of ePharmacy at Vezeeta. “Our pharmacists receive excellent training and compensation to ensure a fulfilling experience for every user, every time they log onto the Vezeeta app.”
Apart from the launch of the major disruptor, Vezeeta, through its founder and CEO, Amir Barsoum has also announced plans to pour over $25m into its Egyptian market this year. All moves are coming as the coronavirus gave the African ehealth sector a record-breaking 2020.
“A year ago, the market in Egypt was not receptive to tele-consultation options and there was little support for the idea and very little uptake from the patients’ side as well as the doctors themselves,” Barsoum told Ahram Online, a local news media. “COVID-19, however, has educated everybody that you can get high-quality healthcare remotely.”
A Battle Wages On Behind The Scene
Vezeeta’s latest move brings with it a cascade of controversies. On the one hand is Egyptian Pharmacists’ Syndicate, which has continuously called for outright ban on online drug sales. The syndicate is serious about the call for ban. It has recently instituted series of reports before Egypt’s Public Prosecutor against a number of applications and online platforms for not playing by industry rules. Last year, the syndicate frustrated investment by Ibnsina Pharma of over $1.8 million into 3elagi tech, a startup which facilitates the searching, comparison and acquisition of healthcare products and services across Egypt. Ibnsina, which is itself a pharmaceutical distribution company helping to distribute products from over 350 Egyptian and multinational companies to more than 35,000 Egyptian customers, said it had to withdraw the investment following the call for boycott of its products and filing of multiple lawsuits against it by the syndicate.
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Vezeeta looks unbothered, though. Apart from collaborating with the Egyptian ministry of health on projects implementation, CEO Barsoum said Vezeeta has nothing to worry about the syndicate’s renewed activism.
“We are 100 percent committed to Egyptian law,” he told Ahram. “We do not send any drugs that have not come out of a licensed pharmacy in the market. We never rely on distribution centres or warehouses. We are not competing with pharmacists at all, but we are a healthcare tech provider company that is working on automating the whole industry.”
Barsoum further said Vezeeta was not breaching the law by taking this action, and that laws in Egypt should actually support this kind of system and push forward prescriptions that improve the quality of the healthcare service in the market and, in return, criminalise hand-written prescriptions as is the case in Europe and the US, where hand-writing prescriptions is penalised.
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“We are pretty close to the ministry of health and had started talks with it in this regard,” he further said. “ But we have to attain some success before introducing a complete vision of an e-pharmacy system to the government to get its support.”
In the meantime, the ehealth company has a war chest of over $60m in VC funding, and looks ready to play the game.
Matters of drug in Egypt is neither the exclusive preserve of the Egyptian Pharmacists’ Syndicate — which is a pressure group set up to promote the profession of pharmacy and to maintain its dignity and raise the scientific and professional level of pharmacists in Egypt — nor of Vezeeta. The Egyptian Ministry of Health, together with Egyptian Drug Authority, the Central Administration of Pharmaceutical Affairs (CAPA), the National Organization for Drug Control and Research (NODCAR), and the National Organization for Research and Control of Biologicals (NOCB) are charged by law to oversee the administration of drugs in the country.
Nonetheless, the syndicate should not be taken for granted. In 2014, the group together with pharmaceutical companies, lobbied the Egyptian government to increase drug prices after the Arab Spring thoroughly ravaged the country’s economy, forcing, among other things, currency devaluation. The government yielded, implementing a 20% price increase on all medicines costing less than EGP 30 in May 2016. In 2017, the Ministry of Health further issued a decree raising the price of 3,010 medicines by 30 to 50% under a new pricing formula.
However the battle goes, it appears that traditional prescription stores via their unions are moaning their last throes for survival, a pain inevitably worsened by the veil lifted on the mess in most countries’ healthcare systems by the coronavirus pandemic.
A Look At What Vezeeta Does
Founded in 2014 by Amir Barsoum and Ahmed Badr, Vezeeta started off as “DrBridge” in 2012 by providing a simple Electronic Medical Records solution to doctors in their private clinics. Unfortunately, DrBridge produced just a growth rate of 5% month over month (MoM), forcing the team to pivot further to a Practice Calendar Management scheme, which also failed. The co-founders then settled for Vezeeta in 2014. The Vezeeta product, unlike DrBridge, displayed an incredible 20% MoM growth rate and has now become the flagship product of the business that is revolutionizing the healthcare industry in Egypt.
The business moved from 1,000 doctors in 2015 to 10,000 doctors in 2018, representing more than 10 times increase. Bookings rose by 11 times from 2015 to 2018, too. Vezeeta currently operates in fives countries — Egypt, Saudi, Jordan, Kenya and Lebanon — and closes more than 3 million appointments a year, with more than 11,000 healthcare providers listed on their platform serving more than 2.5 million patients in the region.
“Doctors’ consultations and medication deliveries are key points of interests in healthcare. Medications alone account for 47 percent of the private healthcare opportunity, making ePharmacy a very exciting product,” explained Maha Melhem, VP of Vezeeta’s ePharmacy last year.
“By providing a fully digitized pharmaceutical experience, we are able to eliminate the many middlemen that not only slow down the process but also hinder patients’ experience. Our multi-service ePharmacy channel is equipped to offer auto-refill services, medication reminders, seamless same-day deliveries and hassle-free secure online payments to all users, among other essential healthcare services,” she added.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer
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