Kenyan Health Tech Startup TIBU Seals ‘Oversubscribed’ Seed Investment Deal

Kenyan on-demand healthcare startup, TIBU, has raised a seed investment that is expected to accelerate and expand its operations in the country.

Although the amount involved was not disclosed, the funding round was reportedly oversubscribed by 100 percent. Venture Capital firms, Blue Haven Initiative and Kepple Africa Ventures, raised the funds. This is not the first time Kepple is investing in the digital platform.

TIBU’s co-founder and CEO, Jason Carmichael, said the funding will make it possible for the company to “source great local software engineering talent so that we can build a globally competitive back-end that focuses on health service logistics, as well as a front-end platform that will allow for a more streamlined user experience when scheduling our many services.”

“We are extremely happy to work with such sophisticated investors and partners as Blue Haven Initiative and Kepple Africa Ventures. Their track record of providing tangible, non-monetary support to budding companies is something that we are particularly looking forward to as we expand services in Kenya,” Jason told Disrupt Africa.

Since its launch in early 2020, TIBU has served more than 10,000 patients and executed multiple initiatives that aided its fast traction across Kenya and strengthened its business viability. Some of the services include the comprehensive home-based vaccination in partnership with Amref Health Africa and its health packages focused on chronic diseases.

“We see building our internal capabilities around logistics and sample collection to be quite important for growth. Essentially, we are laying the groundwork for replicability and scale across markets,” Carmichael added.

One of the investors, Lauren Cochran, who is the managing director of Blue Haven Initiative, experienced optimism in TIBU’s business and said its team is “charting the future of healthcare delivery in Africa”.

“TIBU’s technology connects existing healthcare services with people where they are and want to be, their home. The pandemic stretched healthcare systems thin in even the wealthiest nations, and the need for increased capacity in healthcare service and delivery was already great in Kenya,” she said.

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Lauren added, “there’s an opportunity across the continent to distribute services and, like so many other industries, reduce the need for expensive centralised infrastructure. Though some healthcare delivery will of course always happen in a hospital, TIBU’s stellar team and technology are changing how we think about what that will look like in the future.”

The mass adoption of mobile phones in Africa and the advancement in medical technologies are correcting the historic inefficiencies in the healthcare industry on the continent. TIBU is one of the health tech platforms providing the solutions and simultaneously mining the business opportunities in Africa’s e-health sector.