Participated · Debt Financing · Feb 2024

Ilara Health is a Kenya-based healthtech that enables private clinics to acquire diagnostic devices, pharmaceuticals and other clinic items on credit. The company began by leasing diagnostic devices to clinics in 2019 and has since expanded its offering to include pharmaceuticals, hospital furniture and a subscription practice-management software. Ilara serves about 3,000 clinics across Kenya and charges KSh.1000 (~$6.25) monthly for its software, which digitizes operations and supplies data for reporting and credit assessment. It partners with manufacturers such as Butterfly Network to provide low-cost portable ultrasound devices and other equipment. The startup plans to use new funding to scale operations in Kenya and to roll out a B2B health and occupational service that gives uninsured workers access to partner clinics for a fixed monthly fee. Management also intends to use clinic data from the software to support credit ratings and lend up to $15,000 in working capital to clinics. Ilara Health is a Nairobi-based diagnostics health-tech service provider that partners with healthcare facilities to expand access to basic diagnostic tests. Since its 2018 inception the company has grown partnerships across Nairobi and Kisumu from 15 to 200 facilities and aims to make diagnostics more accessible and affordable to over 500 million Africans. It recently raised $3.75 million in Series A funding led by TLcom Capital with participation from DOB Equity, Global Ventures, and Chandaria Capital to fund service expansion and technology investment. CEO and co-founder Emilian Popa said the company will widen its disease-indication coverage and create end-to-end value across the care delivery process. Ilara plans to reach patients who currently struggle to access lifesaving tests and to develop data-driven insights to improve quality of care across the continent. The new capital is intended to accelerate service expansion and build the company's technological capabilities across its partner network. Ilara Health distributes low-cost, AI-powered diagnostic devices bundled with its proprietary electronic medical record (EMR) system to primary-care doctors in peri-urban and rural clinics. The EMR records patient data and helps clinicians provide effective patient management while the diagnostics enable testing at the point of care. The company says it was started to help doctors bring diagnostics to the roughly 500 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who need them most and notes that about 70% of patients need some form of medical test to inform treatment. Ilara will use the new funding to grow its peri-urban clinic customer base in Kenya and to build a flexible technology platform to manage and protect patient health and clinic financial data. The startup was founded by CEO Emilian Popa, COO Amaan Banwait and VP sales Hannes Eckmayr and is based in Nairobi, Kenya. The company also received a Columbia Business School Tamer Fund seed grant award (seed grants up to $25,000) announced in late July.

Participated · Debt Financing · Apr 2022

Founded in 2013 by Alloysius Attah and Emmanuel Owusu Addai, Farmerline works through agro-dealers to ensure access to high-quality supplies including fertilizer and seeds. Partner retailers use the startup’s Mergdata, a proprietary AI platform for supply-chain intelligence, to digitize farmers and predict demand to prevent stock-outs. The company leverages that data to determine business-expansion credit for agro-dealers and is expanding its physical infrastructure—warehouses and distribution networks—to create a marketplace that speeds movement of supplies and market access for farmers. Farmerline is expanding across West Africa, operating in Ghana and setting up operations in Ivory Coast. It has financed around $18 million worth of inputs and crops through franchise shop alliances and is targeting a direct reach of 300,000 farmers in 2022 (up from 79,000 the prior year). The company plans to strengthen supply chains to reduce farming costs and increase yields through AI deployment and local infrastructure amid rising fertiliser prices and food-security pressures. Farmerline is a Ghanaian agritech that provides a digital and physical marketplace connecting farmers to high-quality inputs, training, and market access. Its core product includes Mergdata, a proprietary AI supply-chain intelligence platform used to digitize farmers and predict demand for farm supplies. Farmerline works through partner agribusiness retail shops to distribute inputs and educational materials and to gather farmers for training, and it has developed credit-scoring for business expansion loans. The company has digitized over 1 million farmers across 26 countries and counts 180 clients for third-party Mergdata licensing; it more than doubled direct reach to 79,000 farmers last year (up from 36,000 in 2020 and 8,000 in 2019). Using new funding it plans to strengthen physical infrastructure—warehouses and distribution networks—and to expand first within Ghana and then into Ivory Coast, targeting 300,000 farmers in 2022 (roughly 400% growth versus the prior year).