Emma Okonji
LifeBank has closed its seed round led by EchoVC Pan-Africa Fund. Also participated in the round were CcHub Growth Capital and an undisclosed healthcare angel investor.
LifeBank is a last mile medical supply chain company, which leverages technology to discover, organise and deliver essential medical products to hospitals and in the process, acquires actionable data. The company is initially focused on optimising blood supplies given the size, fragmentation and severity of the need.
Targeted use of funding proceeds will be to extend its supply chain to include oxygen, vaccines, blood components and rare drugs as well as expand its coverage across Nigeria, particularly to Northern Nigeria, where reaching the last mile remains a very pressing issue.
Launched in 2016, LifeBank currently has over 41 authenticated blood banks on its online platform and has delivered to 167 hospitals. LifeBank’s optimised supply chain has helped save over 1,000 lives so far.
Its smart logistics system includes specially designed cold chain boxes that retain temperature for up to 30 hours, color-coded temperature strips for additional quality assurance and Bluetooth-enabled locks to guarantee security.
LifeBank’s goal is to continue to breakdown the challenges of medical supply logistics with technology-driven approaches. It is working on a host of supply chain-focused solutions such as employing AI techniques to predict blood needs at the hospital level and utiising blockchain technology to store authenticated non-alterable product information. The company also plans to use drones to serve hard-toreach rural clinics.
“Solving local healthcare problems at scale is a very important focus for our firm and we are very excited to invest in a company that is providing innovative healthcare-related solutions to life-threatening problems not just in Nigeria but across Africa,†said Uche Ogboi of EchoVC Partners.
