Reliance Health, a Nigerian healthtech startup, based in Lagos and Texas has raised $40 million in a Series B round. The startup makes use of an integrated process to offer telemedicine and health insurance through its direct services as well as partnerships with hospitals and healthcare facilities.
The startup aims to address the problems of accessibility and affordability of healthcare in Nigeria. Users get access to a number of healthcare products by subscriptions. Reliance Health provides some of these services directly — with two clinics based in Lagos; while others are provided via third-party partners such as hospitals, diagnostic centres and pharmaceutical centres.
Reliance Health was founded in 2016 by Femi Kuti, Opeyemi Olumekun and Matthew Mayaki. The trio had founded Kangpe back in 2015, a telemedicine startup, but decided to change to Reliance after facing follow-up gaps in its healthcare processes.
“Back then, for example, if a patient chats with this doctor and he recommends an x-ray checkup or after that, a surgery, what happens next?” asked Kuti, chief executive. “We weren’t able to manage all those [end-to-end] processes and that necessitated sort of a soft pivot from the whole telemedicine focus thing to this integrated healthcare provider that we’re doing today,” he said.
Reliance Health has over 200,000 users from both of its operating models — business-to-business and business-to-customers. The company’s health insurance plan ranges from N3,500 ($7) to N148,500 ($297) on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis. The startup said it has reached a 3.5x year-on-year revenue growth from 2016.
The Series B round was led by General Atlantic. Other investors included Partech, Picus Capital, Tencent Exploration, Africa Healthcare Master Fund, P1 Ventures, Laerdal Million Lives Fund and M3 Inc.
“General Atlantic is thrilled to announce our first technology investment in Africa in Reliance Health, backing a team focused on improving healthcare quality for millions of patients in Nigeria and abroad,” said Chris Caulkin, the managing director of General Atlantic, in a statement.
Reliance Health plans to build two more clinic facilities in Abuja and Port Harcourt. It will also expand into new markets, leading with Egypt — with a coming launch mid-year.
