It is estimated that about 2 billion people, especially in lower- and middle-income countries, do not have access to high-quality and reasonably priced essential medicines. The situation is made worse by poor quality or even deadly counterfeit drugs that fill the gap. This deficiency implies that otherwise treatable or preventable diseases cause suffering and even death.
This is the problem of the B2B market Ahmed goals to solve the problem of supply chain fragmentation, and the startup recently raised $2 million in seed funding from Founderful Ventures to implement its plans.
Focusing on lower- and middle-income countries, Axmed is building a marketplace that goals to connect manufacturers with healthcare institutions to remove inefficiencies that lead to shortages, high costs and the spread of counterfeit medicines. The startup wants to achieve this by aggregating demand, enabling buyers to source drugs directly from manufacturers at lower costs and moving away from traditional pharmaceutical supply chains that involve multiple levels of dealers and distributors. To find a way to trade on the market, each sellers and buyers would have to meet many regulatory and legal criteria.
The startup’s initial goal markets include Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Rwanda, where it goals to tap the market through faith-based institutions, non-governmental organizations, government-led care providers and procurement agencies.
Axmed, based in Switzerland, is currently working with partners to fully validate the initial version of its product ahead of full launch later this yr. The latest funding follows a $5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to provide maternal and child health care in high-priority countries.
Emmanuel Akpakwu (CEO), with whom he co-founded the startup Felix faints AND Sofia Radley-Searle, told TechCrunch that they intend to use the aggregation model to strengthen purchasing power and create attractive market opportunities for manufacturers. He added that such models have been used in the past to address emergencies akin to the Covid-19 pandemic, but such procurement initiatives either never go beyond their initial scope or fade away once the emergency subsides.
“We wanted to build something that would last and truly become a sustainable, long-term venture that focused on empowering buyers and patients, making them more attractive to high-quality manufacturers, and to them [makers] enter these markets in a much more efficient and seamless way,” he said.
Additionally, the platform goals to provide insight into the size or actual potential of those markets. Akpakwu says most local, regional and global manufacturers need to understand the market size and how to effectively engage with these regions.
Akpakwu previously served as chief business officer for Novartis’ Sub-Saharan Africa region. It was during this term that he had to face challenges and obstacles that prevent or discourage manufacturers from expanding into latest markets. Axmed was created later to aggregate orders and create an attractive market for producers.
Axmed joins a growing list of platforms akin to Africa Medicines Supply Platform and Xs2Meds, in addition to health technology firms akin to Drugstoc and Remedial Health, that are digitizing the pharmaceutical supply chain and solving supply and distribution challenges for pharmacies and institutions akin to like hospitals.