According to the WHO, counterfeit medicines cause nearly 100,000 deaths in Africa each year. Grinta wants to remove this scourge by offering medicine traceability and authentication solution.

Egyptian digital pharmacy platform Grinta, announced Monday (Nov. 21), a US$8 million raise to develop its tech platform and accelerate its growth in the local market. The funds, raised during a seed round, were secured from Raed Ventures (Saudi Arabia) and NClude, an Egyptian FinTech fund managed by Global Ventures (Dubai).

"As we plan to expand our footprint in the main pharma hubs on the continent, we will also enable Egyptian and regional pharma manufacturers to further penetrate the US$50 billion African market," said Grinta co-founder and CEO Mohamed Azab.

According to the company's statement, Egypt’s US$6.3 billion pharmaceutical market (Softgroup) is the largest and fastest-growing in Africa. It has three major distributors and more than 3,000 wholesalers targeting 60,000 fragmented retail pharmacies. Nevertheless, the market is also affected by the shortage of pharmaceutical products that usually hit African countries (nearly half of Africa's population (1.1 billion people) lacks regular access to the most essential medicines).

Since its inception in 2021, Grinta has been working to reduce the drug shortage in Egypt by modernizing the pharmaceutical supply chain and empowering independent pharmacies. Its end-to-end platform provides access to the full range of traceable pharmaceutical and medical products from multiple suppliers, in addition to order fulfillment, demand planning, and inventory financing.

Thanks to the funds secured, it wants to scale its full-stack technology platform, expand its team and accelerate its growth in the Egyptian market. Within a year and a half of operation, the company has aggressively expanded across seven governorates in Egypt, with over 14,000 pharmacies registered on its platform, more than 100,000 orders delivered, and more than 14,000 stock management units.

Samira Njoya