Kenya’s Ilara Health Raises $3.75m Series A Funding to Bring Affordable Diagnostics to Rural Africa

Ilara Health,  a Nairobi based health-tech start-up has raised $3.75 million in Series A funding to help bring essential, affordable and life-saving diagnostics to rural Africa.

The funding round was led by TLcom Capital, with participation from DOB Equity, Global Ventures and Chandaria Capital.

According to the CEO, Emilian Popa, the funding round will allow the company to significantly grow its on-the-ground presence and invest resources into its technology capabilities.

“In just one year of operation, we have seen the incredible impact our Ilara Health platform has had in delivering improved services across maternal, metabolic, cardiovascular and infectious disease care. We view this as only the beginning, widening our disease indication coverage and creating end-to-end value throughout the entire care delivery process.”

He added that the company will, in the comings months, continue to reach patients who currently struggle to access basic lifesaving tests and also develop data-driven insights for better quality care across the continent.

Before now the startup received a $1.1m grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and also got accepted into MIT Solve’s fourth batch of Solvers.

With this latest funding, the startup has now raised over $5.585 million.

Affordable Diagnostic tools for Africans

Founded in 2019 by Amaan Banwait, Emilian Popa, Hannes Eckmayr and Sameer Farooqi, llara Health is a fast-growing startup that is powering existing primary care facilities with the next-generation point of care diagnostic tools.

The vast majority of clinical decisions often require some form of laboratory diagnosis, but many peri-urban and rural locations lack diagnostic services leading to high rates of preventable death and illness.

Ilara Health works to meet this unmet need by increasing patient access to life-saving tests and screenings as well as enabling local providers to improve their primary health service.

The startup has partnered with over 200 facilities across wider Nairobi and Kisumu to bridge the diagnostic gap across sub-Saharan Africa. This is up from the 15 it had at the start of the year.

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In summary

The challenge of bringing affordable and high-quality diagnostics to the actual points of care is yet to be solved in Africa. Ido Sum, Partner at TLcom expressed belief in Ilara Health’s wider vision of combining world-class technologies, financing and tech layer to bring true value to medical professionals and patients at the clinics visited by the majority of the population.

Consequently, the health startup has revealed that with the new influx of cash, it will look to expand across wider Kenya and a new East African market within the next 12 months.