DOB Equity invests in Ilara Health to provide affordable technology powered diagnostics for Africa

Ilara Health raises $3.75m Series A from TLcom, DOB Equity, Global Ventures and Chandaria Capital to accelerate data driven healthcare for peri-urban clinics

 Ilara Health,  a healthtech start-up focused on bringing essential, affordable and life-saving diagnostics to African consumers, has raised $3.75 million in Series A funding led by TLcom Capital, with participation from DOB Equity, Global Ventures and Chandaria Capital. The fast-growing Nairobi-based start-up will use the funding to expand their diagnostic reach across the continent and to accelerate the development of its integrated patient health management platform. 

llara Health powers existing primary care facilities with next-generation point of care diagnostic tools to bridge the diagnostic gap across sub-Saharan Africa. The vast majority of clinical decisions often require some form of laboratory diagnosis, but in many peri-urban and rural locations 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.  

Emilian Popa, CEO and co-founder of Ilara Health said, “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.” 

Ido Sum, Partner at TLcom said “We have been following the underserved health space in Africa for quite some time. While this is one of the areas on which African consumers spend the most, the quality of health outcomes needs to improve. The challenge of bringing affordable and high-quality diagnostics to the actual points of care is yet to be solved. 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.”      

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 has also recently announced the receipt of a $1.1m grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in addition to its acceptance into MIT Solve’s fourth batch of Solvers, earlier this year.