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Nigerian Healthtech Firm Raises $1M To Build 100 Diagnostic Centers In West Africa

Nigerian Healthtech Firm Raises $1M To Build 100 Diagnostic Centers In West Africa

healthtech firm
MDaaS Founding Team L-R: Joe McCord (Supply Chain), Opeyemi Ologun (Country Manager, Nigeria), Genevieve Barnard Oni (CFO), Oluwasoga Oni (CEO). Photo – MDaaS

Nigerian healthtech firm MDaaS Global has ambitious plans to build 100 healthcare centers in Nigeria and West Africa over the next five years after closing on $1 million in seed funding.

The investment was led by Consonance Investment Managers, a Mauritius-based investment firm focused on early-stage and growth startups in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a press release.

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FINCA Ventures, an investment initiative of FINCA International, and Techstars participated in the investment.

MDaaS was founded in 2016 by CEO Oluwasoga Oni, Opeyemi Ologun, CFO Genevieve Barnard Oni, and Joseph McCord. The startup went through the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, Weetracker reports.

The startup was part of the inaugural TechStars Impact class of 2018, according to Forbes.

Based in Autin, Texas, TechStars is an accelerator that hosts three-month programs for global tech startups that are focused on addressing a social or environmental problem.

Nigerian healthtech firm on a mission

MDaaS was created to address the lack of high-quality, affordable diagnostic services available for low and middle-income sub-Saharan Africans, IAfrikan reports.

Oluwasoga Oni’s father was a doctor at a small hospital in Nigeria and seeing the bad state of healthcare and his father’s struggle with broken equipment motivated the startup’s CEO to improve access for all people regardless of income level.

Health services are unaffordable for most Nigerians, and expensive out-of-pocket costs discourage patients from visiting or making use of them.

MDaas says it is able to offer more affordable services than the current healthcare system by introducing software, designing its centers more efficiently, investing heavily in an integrated supply chain, and sharing resources across locations, Medium reports.

MDaaS plans to use the funding to scale its diagnostic center business model. The firm has just one diagnostic center in Ibadan which has served more than 9,000 patients, according to Ventureburn.

The company expects to open 100 additional centers in Nigeria and West Africa over the next five years by partnering with and bolstering poorly-equipped hospitals and clinics with state-of-the-art technology, AltAfrica reports.