Following its inability to secure venture capital, the healthtech startup Redbird has closed down. “We needed to raise a new round of funding by the end of 2022, and our growth and the state of the investment market didn’t match up, according to the statement released by the CEO, Patrick Beattie.
In 2021, they raised a $1.5 million seed investment to expand access to rapid medical testing in sub-Saharan Africa, thus bringing the company’s total funding to $2.5 million. Investors in the round included Johnson & Johnson Foundation, Newton Partners (via the Imperial Venture Fund) and Founders Factory Africa.
The company was launched in 2018 by Patrick Beattie, Andrew Quao and Edward Grandstaff. Redbird enabled pharmacies to add to their rapid diagnostic testing services for ten different health conditions. These tests include anaemia, blood sugar, blood pressure, BMI, cholesterol, Hepatitis B, malaria, typhoid, prostate cancer screening and pregnancy.
Also, Redbird provides pharmacies with the necessary equipment, supplies and software to make this possible. Through its Redbird Health Monitoring software, a network across all partner pharmacies enabled patients to build medical testing records after going through five-minute medical tests offered through these pharmacies.
At the time of the closure, the company supported over 600 pharmacies and hundreds of thousands of patients in Ghana.
Source: Patrick Beattie
