Yodawy bets Egypt's paper prescriptions go digital end-to-end; $16M Series B

Yodawy is an Egyptian pharmacy benefits platform: doctors write digital prescriptions on its gateway, insurers approve claims through its automation engine, and patients get chronic medications delivered from a network of partner pharmacies.

Win Egyptian pharma on the payer side: automate the paper prescription and insurance-approval chain, then let pharmacies fulfill, not just compete on delivery.

$7.5M Series A in 2019, a $16M Series B first close in February 2023 co-led by Global Ventures and Delivery Hero Ventures, and a $10M minority investment from Ezdehar in January 2024 — about $34.5M disclosed total.

Yodawy was founded in 2018 in Giza by Karim Khashaba, Yasser AbdelGawad and Sherief El-Feky. Egypt is the largest pharma producer in MENA, yet more than 90% of its prescriptions and insurance claims were recorded on paper, causing prescription errors, long processing times and pharmacy queues.

After a $7.5M Series A in 2019, Yodawy scaled the B2B2C model: 20 health insurance companies, 3,000 pharmacies and more than 300 corporate clients in Egypt, an e-prescription gateway generating over 2,000 digital scripts a day with seven insurers, and a nationwide fulfillment network delivering in 38 cities. In February 2023 it closed the first $16M of a Series B co-led by Global Ventures and Delivery Hero Ventures — the latter's first Africa investment — with AAIC Investment and Saudi Arabia's Dallah Al-Baraka joining, bringing disclosed capital to $24.5M.

Yodawy is still running and stayed in growth mode after its Series B: in January 2024 Egyptian private equity firm Ezdehar took a minority stake with a $10M investment earmarked for expanding Yodawy's client base and tech-enabled prescription fulfillment.

Egypt's prescription chain was almost entirely paper-based, so an e-prescription gateway plus an approvals engine solved a problem felt by insurers, doctors and patients alike.

Serving employers and insurers made Yodawy mission-critical infrastructure rather than a discretionary consumer app, which is why it became the sole pharmacy partner for hundreds of corporates.

The 400% revenue growth in 18 months and 4 million processed prescriptions gave investors concrete proof before the Series B.

Delivery Hero Ventures' first Africa check was strategic: Yodawy lacked last-mile capability, and Delivery Hero's network was a plausible fulfillment partner for expansion.

In a paper-based market the deepest pain is not the consumer moment but the payer workflow: automating prescriptions and insurance approvals gave Yodawy a wedge rivals could not easily copy.

As of 2024-01-16 Yodawy remained Egypt's leading pharmacy benefits platform and had just received a $10M minority investment from Ezdehar's Egypt Mid-Cap Fund II, whose backers include the EBRD and IFC. Ezdehar said the money would support growth by expanding Yodawy's client base and tech-enabled prescription capabilities; CEO Karim Khashaba called the funding critical to reducing healthcare costs and improving patient access. No new funding round or shutdown had been disclosed since.