HealthTech Startup, Chekkit Closes $500k Pre-Seed Funding Round

Nigerian tracking and monitoring health tech startup, Chekkit announced that it secured pre-seed funding of $500,000.

The round had participation from the Pan-African VC fund, Launch Africa, Japanese government investment fund, Japan Strategic capital, the Blockchain Founders Fund, two syndicate groups of angel investors with completing grants from the Orange Corners programme.

According to Chekkit, the funds will be utilised to further strengthening its anti-counterfeiting and consumer engagement solutions as well as building robust supply chain tracking and infrastructural optimisation technologies in order to directly protect up to 100 million lives across the globe.

Chekkit is a Nigeria-based startup that focuses on ensuring product integrity across the value chain. Using blockchain technology, Chekkit is able to monitor premium packaged goods and products through the unique tamper-proof ID it gives to individual products. 

The startup was founded by Dare Odumade (a UI/UX expert) and Jida Asare (a Pharmacist and software developer). Since its launch, the startup has developed two solutions: Consumer Intelligence and Supply Chain Tracking.

Its achievements include securing over 7 million pharmaceutical products and protecting over 200,000 consumers as well as a partnership with the Afghan government for the verification and tracking of over 200 million products.

This was achieved through a partnership with pharmaceutical companies like Merck, Royal Star Pharma, Nabros Pharmaceutical, it said.

Nigeria contributes a significant number of the 100,000 deaths recorded every day in Africa as a result of fake products, especially from pharmaceutical products. A report by the World Health Organisation in 2020 found that 70 percent of all drugs present in Nigeria were substandard or fake.