MDI leads $27m round for Singapore's SwipeRx
Indonesia’s MDI Ventures has led a USD 27m Series B round for Singapore-based mClinica, now rebranded as SwipeRx, an app that connects 45,000 pharmacies across Southeast Asia.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures, and SIG Asia also participated alongside unspecified existing investors. A USD 6.3m Series A came in 2017 with support from Unitus Impact, Global Innovation Fund, Endeavor Catalyst, IMJ Investment Partners, Kickstart Ventures, and 500 Startups, as well as MDI.
SwipeRX is a digital pharmacy services platform that supports industry needs around logistics, negotiated pricing and financing. Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia are the main markets.
More than 235,000 pharmacy professionals use the platform, which is said to leverage collaboration with the entire pharmaceutical ecosystem. This includes multinational pharmaceutical companies, governments, and non-government organisations. The staff numbers around 400.
There is a strong emphasis on the community-driven aspect of the business model. Once users are connected as a community, SwipeRx enrols members in a purchasing network that enables small pharmacies to benefit from scale while improving the availability and affordability of medicines and access to financing options.
SwipeRx brands itself as the leading application for pharmacies in Southeast Asia and the largest digital community for pharmacy professionals with an all-in-one B2B commerce capability. Founder and CEO Farouk Meralli described the company’s growth in recent years as “exponential.”
In Indonesia alone, more than 8,000 retail pharmacies – said to amount to a quarter of all pharmacies in the country – are on SwipeRx. Over 5,000 of them have joined the company’s digital purchasing network and transact on its B2B platform.
The fresh capital will be used to scale the network of pharmacies, expand the logistics offering for B2B e-commerce, accelerate technological innovation, and recruit talent across the region with a focus on Indonesia.
“We see great potential and promise in SwipeRx’s platform as it strives to address the challenges faced by pharmacies, especially in Indonesia, by connecting different players – big and small – all under one platform,” Donald Wihardja, CEO of MDI Ventures, said in a statement.
“SwipeRx has the largest retail purchasing network, national logistics capabilities, financing options and fully integrated B2B stack for pharmacies to leverage.”
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