Kenya’s Ilara Health raises $3.75m led by TLcom to expand across sub-Saharan Africa

Ilara Health,  a Kenyan afforable diagnostic healthtech start-up has raised $3.75 million in Series A funding led by TLcom Capital, with participation from DOB Equity, Global Ventures and Chandaria Capital.

Illara Health will use the funding to expand its diagnostic reach across the continent and to accelerate the development of its integrated patient health management platform.

According to Emilian Popa, CEO and co-founder of Ilara Health, “This funding round allows us to significantly grow our on-the-ground presence and invest resources into our 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. In the coming months, we will continue working to reach patients who currently struggle to access basic lifesaving tests and on developing data-driven insights for better quality care across the continent.”

llara Health recently received a $1.1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and had previously raised $735,000 from ShakaVC, a Nairobi-based firm backed by Chinese investors, Chandaria Capital, the venture capital arm Chandaria Industries and Villgro Kenya.

The startup powers existing primary care facilities with next-generation point of care diagnostic tools to bridge the diagnostic gap across sub-Saharan Africa where diagnostic services are non-existent, 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 and enabling local providers to improve their core business and health service quality. The diagnostic data points generated at a patients’ first contact will facilitate ongoing patient management through Ilara Health’s closed-loop patient management system as well as identify previously nonexistent insights on local disease burdens and trends across underserved geographies.

Ilara Health has partnered with over 200 facilities across wider Nairobi and Kisumu, up from 15 at the start of the year, and will look to expand across wider Kenya and a new East African market within the next 12 months. It was earlier this year, accepted into MIT Solve’s fourth batch of Solvers.

Ido Sum, Partner at TLcom said “ We are excited about what Ilara Health was able to build in such a short time, and more so about their wider vision of combining world class technologies, financing and their own tech layer to bring true value to medical professionals and patients at the clinics visited by the majority of the population. Ilara Health very much represents the companies we like to partner with the most: solving a true, and large African problem, using tech to achieve scale, and bringing clear and very tangible value to its clients.”