Backers including 500 Startups fund Philippine mobile healthcare startup

From L to R: Koichi Saito, Director, IMJ Investment Partners; Farouk Meralli, CEO & Founder, mClinica; Dave McClure, Founding Partner, 500 Startups; and Minette Navarrete, President, Kickstart Ventures. Behind them are (L-R) Christian Besler, Vice-President, Kickstart; Kaspar Zhou, Principal, 500 Startups; and Khailee Ng, Managing Partner, 500 Startups.

Philippine startup mClinica, a mobile platform catering to the pharmaceutical industry, announced today it raised an undisclosed amount from 500 Startups, IMJ Investment Partners of Japan, and Kickstart Ventures of the Philippines.

The funds will fuel mClinica’s expansion in Southeast Asia, its priority market since pharmacies here are “highly fragmented” and industry data is “scarce,” says the startup team.

Through mClinica, drug companies can reach pharmacies on a large scale using mobile phones and provide programs to improve patients’ health.

Patients can avail of discounts on medicine from pharmacies using the company’s platform, allowing the pharmacies and the drug companies supplying them to, in turn, boost store sales and brand awareness through promotions.

As information on patients’ medicine purchases are logged into mClinica’s platform, it creates a powerful database that pharmaceutical companies and their distributors, as well as pharmacies can access real time.

“The dynamics of fragmented pharmacies in emerging markets presented the issue of lack of data at crucial points of the value chain,” says mClinica founder Farouk Meralli.

He adds: “While emerging markets were growing rapidly, we did not have access to the same data we had in more mature markets to make critical business decisions. mClinica was born to build a smart, digital infrastructure, powered by mobile that could generate that data.”

Meralli is a 28-year-old Harvard graduate who left his career at pharmaceutical heavyweights Roche, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer to start the company.

To date, mClinica has over 1,400 pharmacies on its platform with access to over 20 million customers.

Southeast Asian prescription

mClinica plans to expand to Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand in the coming year, and its funders are optimistic about its growth prospects.

“By combining proprietary software solutions with genuine insight into patient needs, a deep understanding of the pharma industry, and on-the-ground retail experience in emerging markets, mClinica is creating real value throughout the ecosystem and their traction shows it,” says Minette Navarrete, president of Kickstart.

Dave McClure, founding partner of 500 Startups, and Koichi Saito, director of IMJ Investment Partners, share Navarrete’s view.