Medikea, a Tanzanian healthtech startup, has raised $1.2 million in pre-seed investment to make bigger a healthcare community that mixes digital consultations with bodily clinics, diagnostic labs, pharmacies, and specialist care.
Baobab Community, Catalyst Fund, develoPPP Ventures, Madica, Impacc, Hustle Fund, O’Shaughnessy Ventures, Madiro, Boehringer Ingelheim Basis, and an unnamed angel investor subsidized the investment spherical.
The lift comes as healthtech startups throughout Africa proceed to stand a troublesome investment surroundings. Healthtech firms raised just $18 million, or 1.3% of the $1.44 billion African startups secured within the first part of 2026.
Medikea says it has already used a part of the $1.2 million to make bigger its medical institution community, opening two new amenities in Arusha and Morogoro and bringing its general to 4 clinics throughout Tanzania.
The corporate stated the remainder capital will fund its subsequent section of growth, together with new clinics, key hires, know-how and product construction, operations, gross sales, advertising and marketing, and expansion.
“Construction this manner is more difficult, and we selected it intentionally,” Dr Elvis Silayo, Medikea’s co-founder and leader government officer, stated in a observation. “In case you layer know-how on best of a damaged gadget, you might be digitising inefficiency. You inherit somebody else’s prices and somebody else’s high quality issues, and you’ll’t scale previous them. We rebuilt the portions we rely on, in order that we will be able to ship a greater revel in at a lower cost and nonetheless hang an excellent margin.”
Based in 2022 by way of Silayo and a workforce of docs and device engineers, Medikea began with the concept know-how may make healthcare more uncomplicated to get entry to, however realised the issue went past electronic get entry to, as sufferers needed to transfer between amenities relying at the scenario. Personal healthcare presented an alternate, however used to be too pricey for many of us paying out of pocket. That led Medikea to construct what it describes as a technology-enabled healthcare supply gadget.
How Medikea works
In Medikea’s present iteration, a affected person can use the app to seek the advice of a physician just about, discuss with one in all Medikea’s clinics when an exam is wanted, get checks at its diagnostic lab, fill a prescription at its pharmacy, and go back to digital deal with follow-up. Its digital clinical data attach those interactions and make allowance the affected person’s historical past to persist with them. The corporate stated it operates specialist outpatient products and services protecting paediatrics, girls’s fitness, dermatology, fertility, and protracted illness care.
“Healthcare is one huge marketplace made up of products and services that each one rely on every different. In case you construct just one phase, you rely on companions for the remainder, and also you lose regulate over what issues maximum to sufferers: accept as true with, reliability, pace and worth,” Silayo instructed TechCabal in an electronic mail reaction. “There may be a large number of speak about healthcare being damaged. Digitising a damaged gadget simply brings all its issues to the cloud. What wishes solving first is how care is delivered. Then know-how makes it environment friendly and scalable.”
Madikea’s trade type is extra capital-intensive than conventional electronic fitness platforms; it comes to running the clinics, laboratories, and pharmacies and its electronic carrier. The corporate believes proudly owning those portions of the healthcare adventure too can make the trade extra winning because it scales.
“The 2 channels have other prices, and mixing them we could us use every the place it makes essentially the most sense,” Silayo stated. “The medical institution is the place accept as true with is constructed and the place examinations, checks, and procedures occur. Digital care makes follow-up more uncomplicated and not more expensive to ship, and we could every medical institution serve sufferers way past its partitions. In combination, they allow us to stay care steady and set up prices throughout the entire affected person adventure.”
The vertically built-in healthcare type places Medikea in festival with Tanzanian digital-health avid gamers, together with TanzMED, AfyaCall, and LyfPlus, in addition to conventional clinics. Throughout Africa, Uganda’s Rocket Well being and Kenya-based Zuri Well being, which makes use of partnerships and cell infrastructure to increase its achieve, additionally use the similar method to healthcare. Medikea says proudly owning the infrastructure offers it higher regulate over high quality, pricing, scientific workflows, and the affected person revel in.
Medikea earns earnings thru fee-for-service bills for consultations, specialist products and services, diagnostics, and pharmacy merchandise. It additionally provides subscription programmes for sufferers who require ongoing care, starting with persistent illness control. Medikea stated it has served greater than 50,000 sufferers because it began and recently has a scientific workforce of greater than 40 other people. It objectives to serve greater than 100,000 sufferers over the following one year and develop from 4 clinics to ten throughout Tanzania by way of the top of 2027, ahead of increasing into different markets within the area.
“Our greatest lesson is that excellent docs and a handy app don’t seem to be sufficient on their very own. The entire adventure has to paintings in combination,” Silayo stated. “We don’t seem to be merely opening extra clinics. We’re replicating a type during which know-how, scientific groups and amenities paintings in combination across the affected person.”
Medikea plans to make bigger by way of opening and running its personal clinics, even supposing it is usually open to obtaining present amenities. For now, the corporate is excited about proving that its type can scale sustainably in Tanzania ahead of coming into different markets within the area.
“Our objective isn’t to go into as many nations as briefly as imaginable,” Silayo stated. “It’s to construct a type that works in Tanzania, then mirror it selectively the place it could possibly make an actual distinction and construct a sustainable trade.”
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