Investor Updates: Nigeria’s Reliance Health raises $40m Series B

Nigeria’s Reliance Health raises $40m Series B

Highlights

• Reliance Health, a Lagos, Nigeria and Austin, Texas-based emerging markets-focused digital healthcare provider, has closed a $40 million Series B funding round led by General Atlantic.
• Founded by Femi Kuti, Opeyemi Olumekun, and Matthew Mayaki, Reliance Health uses an integrated process to provide health insurance and telemedicine via partnerships with hospitals and healthcare facilities.
• The company plans to use the new funds to expand the platform in emerging markets around the world, add new products that complement existing proprietary technology, facilities, and partnerships, as well as hire additional talent.

Source: Business Post Nigeria

Our Takeaway

The global health technology industry—particularly the adoption of telemedicine, virtual care, and drug delivery—has witnessed rapid growth ever since the COVID-19 pandemic started in late 2019 and naturally attracted investor interest. In Africa, albeit at a slower pace, the sector is equally growing driven by digital healthcare providers such as Reliance Health. Broadly, the market value of healthtech in Africa is projected to reach over US$11 billion by 2025.

---

BitPowr launches to provide blockchain infrastructure for African businesses

Highlights

• Nigerian startup BitPowr has launched operations, providing blockchain API, wallet, and digital assets infrastructure for businesses.
• Founded in stealth in early 2021, BitPowr provides infrastructure for businesses and organisations looking to create, manage and secure their crypto wallets using the blockchain network.
• The startup offers a wallet API – a complete suite wallet management solution that lets businesses create and manage different types of wallets for different blockchain and different use cases – and a payments API that enables them to easily accept crypto payments.

Source: Disrupt Africa

Our Takeaway

Interest in blockchain has grown significantly in recent years. In developed economies, the technology provides practical value for several business applications but in Africa, it is still largely limited to individual use-cases tied to crypto, The integration of blockchain into business processes is still very much nascent as it would typically require building systems from scratch, a time-consuming and expensive process. Infrastructure players like Bitpowr hope to change that, helping businesses and developers slash the timeframe and expenses required to maximize the enterprise benefits of blockchain.

---

SA-based Carscan gets additional $1m investment

Highlights

• Carscan, a South African artificial intelligence and Augmented Reality platform that plays in the auto-insurance space has raised a follow-on funding round worth $1.3 million to help it further expand operations. 
• The app creates a traceable digital record of a car and helps automotive ecosystems buy, sell, rent, service, insure, finance, and auction cars with confidence by eliminating fraud, governance, and industry risks.
• The digital application allows anyone to assess and extract details of a car in less than a minute, expediting the insurance claim process from weeks to minutes.

Source: ITweb

Our Takeaway

Carscan plays in a space not many African startups do and claims to be a global first. By addressing significant industry risks across the insurance and automotive landscape using artificial intelligence, the startup has seen tremendous traction in South Africa, Nigeria, and India. Fraud linked to car insurance causes insurers billions of dollars yearly. The startup also recently completed a successful proof of concept in some Gulf countries. Although its technology has a range of other uses, its immediate focus is on inspection and the insurance of cars.