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Egyptian Healthtech Chefaa Secures $5.25 Million Investment for Saudi Expansion

December 18, 2023

Egyptian healthtech Chefaa recently secured a $5.25 million investment in a funding round co-led by Newtown Partners (South Africa) and Global Brain (Japan). Other notable investors include GMS Capital Partners LLC (US), Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures (Nigeria), and M3, Inc. (Japan). Founded in 2017 by Rasha Rady and Doaa Aref, Chefaa is a female-led e-pharmacy platform that aims to provide an end-to-end healthcare experience.

The primary purpose of this substantial investment is to fuel Chefaa’s expansion, particularly in Saudi Arabia, where it has recently launched operations in eight cities. The funds will be utilized to strengthen its presence in the kingdom and scale various models designed to digitize the healthcare supply chain. The investment is strategic, aligning with Chefaa’s mission of leading the safe digital transformation of healthcare through a patient-centric and comprehensive approach.

Why The Investors Invested

Investors committed a significant amount to Chefaa based on its demonstrated success and growth in the challenging healthcare sector. The reasons for this investment are rooted in Chefaa’s ability to improve healthcare accessibility in Egypt and its successful entry into the Saudi market. Investors expressed confidence in Chefaa’s innovative strategies, citing its commitment to innovation, data leverage, and impactful partnerships with major pharmaceutical players.

Newtown Partners, represented by Managing Partner Llew Claasen, emphasized their conviction in the capabilities of Chefaa’s founders and the massive opportunity to improve healthcare access in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) through digitization.

Global Brain Corporation’s Director of Investment Group, Hiroto Sorita, acknowledged Chefaa’s growth in a challenging business climate, affirming the company’s position as a leading patient-centric service provider in the region. GMS Capital Partners LLC CEO Yezan Haddadin highlighted Chefaa’s commitment to innovation and its impact on reshaping the future of healthcare delivery in the region.

Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures Partner Ryosuke Yamawaki expressed the firm’s belief in Chefaa’s unique position to transform the retail pharmaceutical supply chain in Africa, underscoring its potential to become a critical business infrastructure in the broader Gulf region.

A Look at Chefaa

Founded in 2017 by Rasha Rady and Doaa Aref, Chefaa is an Egyptian healthtech startup specializing in e-pharmacy. The platform operates as a patient-centric pharmacy benefits platform, offering an end-to-end healthcare experience. Chefaa recently expanded its operations into Saudi Arabia, operating in eight cities.

Chefaa’s mission is to lead the safe digital transformation of healthcare by prioritizing market needs, overcoming continuous challenges, and designing new services and features aligned with its vision and mission. The startup has garnered investor confidence through its impactful strategies, commitment to innovation, and measured impact on healthcare accessibility. CEO Doaa Aref expressed gratitude for investor support, emphasizing their shared passion and belief in Chefaa’s vision and mission.

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert. As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard.

Egyptian Health-tech Chefaa Secures New Round Of Funding

March 7, 2022

Chefaa, Egypt’s patient-centric pharmaceutical benefits platform, has secured a round of funding led by Newtown Partners, Global Brain, and GMS Capital Partners.

Chefaa is raising these funds to develop its network, assist the introduction of its Chefaa Prime product, a comprehensive medical insurance alternative targeted for emerging economies, and officially launch in additional markets.

Furthermore, Chefaa’s attempts to digitise chronic illness management through a comprehensive approach to create measurable improvements in chronic patients’ quality of life will be supported by this venture round.

“From the start, we focused on empowering Chefaa’s ability to measure the impact of every step it takes with real data, not just for funding but for execution and scaling as well. I believe this venture round is pivotal not because it will only help us scale our validated business models, but because it will also help us capitalize on untapped market opportunities. We are confident Chefaa will dominate over a much larger market share in the next two years,” Doaa Aref, CEO and Founder of Chefaa says.

Chefaa health — *Chefaa founders. Credits: Chefaa*

Why The Investors Invested

Mr Yasuhiko Yurimoto, founder, CEO and General Partner at Global Brain comments on the venture round “ There is usually a challenge to meet patient needs particularly when it comes to medicine. We believe that Chefaa’s approach of growth, which is an opportunity to enhance medical literacy through freemium service and employee benefits, is the right way and contributes to one of the severe national health problems; a shortage of providing optimum care for chronic patients.”

“We have found Chefaa to be compelling for its proven ability to scale across geographies, impressive traction and growth across MENA, a strong female-led team with extensive healthcare and pharmaceutical expertise, a large, engaged base of customers, as well as strong alignment with our pharmaceutical e-commerce thesis and their ability to digitize healthcare interfaces,” Llew Claasen, Managing Partner at Newtown Partners, says.

Global Brain is based in Japan and has a large portfolio of 24 initial public offerings (IPOs) and 54 mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in industries such as commerce, gaming, fintech, and IoT, among others.

The three VCs are making their first foray into the Egyptian sector with this investment. Newtown Partners, based in South Africa, is an early-stage venture fund run by entrepreneurs that has invested in companies like Swyft, Reach Labs, and Blockfolio.

A Look At What The Startup Does

The female-led healthtech, founded in 2017 by Rasha Rady and Doaa Aref, is an e-pharmacy platform that provides an end-to-end healthcare experience.

Chefaa is one of Mena’s leading pharmaceutical and wellness platforms, focusing on providing users with compliant, ethical, and patient-centric services through a variety of services, including Chefaa’s main platform and App, as well as other bespoke AI-driven solutions like Chefaa Prime, a subscription-based service that provides a seamless array of support to patients and medical customers from all walks of life and income levels.

Chefaa health Chefaa health

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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

Chefaa And Dabchy, The Only North African Startups Chosen For MENA’s First Google For Startups Accelerator

February 3, 2021

Tunisia’s “Dabchy”, an online fashion shop as well as Egyptian medicine delivery startup, Chefaa, are the only North African startups chosen among the 10 startups for the first “Google For Startups Accelerator” in the Middle East and North African region.

Google’s program will ask each startup to describe and establish the problem they are working to solve.

“From there, knowledgeable experts from the startup industry and Google will monitor and help address the challenges each startup faces and organize workshops focused on machine learning technologies, design product development, customer acquisition and even leadership development,” said Salim Abid, Google’s regional manager of the developer ecosystem in the MENA region
Read also:Google Expands Kenya’s Accelerator Program, Donates $5m To Startups

“The MENA region is rich in local entrepreneurs who, during the pandemic, stepped up to solve unexpected challenges with innovative technology and resilience,” said Salim Abid, Google’s regional manager of the developer ecosystem in the MENA region,” he added.

Here Is What You Need To Know

Out of more than 500 startups, only 10 were chosen to benefit from the monitoring and support of this accelerator of the American giant, which seeks through this mechanism to identify the “solvers” of the most innovative problems in the region.
The program which targets tech startups has been based on criteria that include several factors, including the problem startups are trying to solve and how they create value for users.
It’s also about their willingness to use machine learning technology to solve business challenges and long-term sustainability of scale.
The 10 companies in the region were selected from more than 500 applicants. They specialize in several areas ranging from health technology to electronic commerce.
These are 3 Jordanian startups (Careers, Abwaab, Viavii), 3 from the United Arab Emirates (Designhubz, Lamsa and 360VUZ), an Egyptian (Chefaa), a Saudi woman (Lendo), and a startup from the Sultanate Oman (Nafas Meditation).

What Does Dabchy Do?

Founded by Amani Mansouri, Ghazi Ketata and Oussama Mahjoub, Dabchy that had initially started as a Facebook Group now has a community of over 400,000 users in Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria, who use its web and mobile-based platform to buy and sell new (unused lying in one’s wardrobe), self-made, pre-owned (used) clothes and accessories for women and kids. Dabchy’s Android app has been downloaded over 100,000 times.

In Tunisia where most of the Dabchy’s business comes from, it takes care of the entire buying and selling process including shipping and payments.
The startup claims to have doubled the catalog of items listed on its platform to 420,000 which (it says) makes it one of the largest online stores in Tunisia. The users, according to a statement by Dabchy, are adding more than 2,000 new items every day.

What Does Chefaa Do?

Founded in 2017 by Doaa Aref and Dr. Rasha Rady, Chefaa connects patients and pharmacies, enabling chronic patients to schedule, order, and refill their recurring prescriptions as well as other non-pharmaceutical products from pharmacies, through its web or mobile apps. The Egyptian startup claims to have fulfilled hundreds of thousands of orders to date.

Chefaa, serving as a marketplace, when a customer places an order, routes it to the nearest pharmacy who then delivers the medicines to the customers.

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

Dabchy Chefaa Google Accelerator

Egypt’s Online Pharmacy Startup Chefaa Raises More Than $1 million In Pre-Series A Round of Funding

June 15, 2020

Egypt-based on-demand medicine delivery platform has raised a seven-figure (USD) Pre-Series A, without disclosing the exact size of the investment. The money came from 500 Startups (who are following-on), Vision Ventures, Womena and few other investors. Chefaa had previously raised a six-figure seed from 500 Startups, Flat6Labs and a few angel investors in August last year.

Doaa Aref and Dr. Rasha Rady, co-founders

“Chefaa is merging ecommerce with the pharmaceutical industry and positioning itself to lead the digital transformation of the pharmaceutical industry. With the capital, we have just raised and support of partners like 500 Startups, Vision Wentures and Womena, we are focused on scaling efficiently and sustainably,” Doaa Aref, the co-founder and CEO of Chefaa, said.

Why The Investors Invested

Hasan Haider, Managing Partner of 500 Startups MENA (500 Falcons), said:

“In the current environment, any startup that can improve people’s lives and assist in social distancing measures is doing a service to all of us. We’re happy to be supporting Chefaa in providing people with a more efficient way to get their medication. The team behind Chefaa have done an exemplary job in executing their goals in a very short period of time, and we look forward to their ongoing success.”

“Health and personal care are basic needs for all humans. Our investment into Chefaa plays a part in ensuring that more people have easy access to basic medicine and personal care products. The team behind Chefaa has shown a deep understanding of the field that translated into great growth. We are glad to be part of their ambitious journey,” Kais Al Essa, Founding Partner & CEO of Vision Ventures said.

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What The Startup Does

Founded in 2017 by Doaa Aref and Dr. Rasha Rady, Chefaa connects patients and pharmacies, enabling chronic patients to schedule, order, and refill their recurring prescriptions as well as other non-pharmaceutical products from pharmacies, through its web or mobile apps. The Egyptian startup claims to have fulfilled hundreds of thousands of orders to date.

Chefaa, serving as a marketplace, when a customer places an order, routes it to the nearest pharmacy who then delivers the medicines to the customers.

It said in a statement that it is helping tens of thousands of chronic patients across Egypt to properly manage their treatment by enabling them to easily order their medicines on a regular basis. Chefaa focuses on chronic patients with repeat orders but its platform is also open for anyone with a prescription to order their medicines, whenever they need them.

The startup that has recently launched its private and while-label products as well, now plans to use the investment to grow its operations team and launch its B2B service to serve SMEs.

“We take pride in serving our growing base of users as well as managing their pharmacy needs. We have built our customer care center to ensure that user experience is being managed professionally. We also understand the impact of chronic illness as well as chronic patients’ needs and we intend to launch new services all designed around making their lives easier,” Dr. Rasha Rady, the co-founder and COO of the startup, said.

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.