Chekkit is raising money to scale its blockchain-powered product
In the next 24 months, the Nigerian pharmaceutical industry will experience a major shift. Finally caught up with the rest of the world in requiring pharmaceuticals to implement end-to-end serialization and traceability.
The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has said that this regulation will come into force from the end of 2024.
For Chekkit, this is a huge opportunity to scale its technology stack that provides manufacturers with serialization and traceability of all packaging levels in line with global standards.
Chekkit has raised an undisclosed round from Adaverse, a Cardano ecosystem accelerator, with participation from existing investors such as RTA, HoaQ, Launch Africa and Blockchain Founders Fund. This news comes after Chekkit was officially announced as the first approved GS1/NAFDAC traceability solutions provider in Nigeria.
Vincent Li, founder of Adaverse, commented: “Chekkit is not just another anti-counterfeiting solution. Rather, it aims to repair the prevailing breach in consumer-producer trust with the blockchain-secured channel, prioritizing consumer insights. We see the potential to transform the supply chain industry and disrupt the DataFi market, and we are excited to support the scaling of Chekkit’s infrastructure.”
“Startups like Chekkit are well positioned to take advantage of the emerging data-driven economy in this digital age. With the building blocks of Web3, and the use of Cardano blockchain tools, Chekkit can help young economies jump ahead in data authenticity and gain valuable consumer insights.” says Shogo Ishida, co-CEO of EMURGO Middle East and Africa
The funds raised will help Chekkit onboard more manufacturers across Nigeria and other regions of Africa, while spreading its tentacles into new markets in India, the UK and the Middle East with a goal of becoming the #1 traceability platform in Africa.
Reacting to the fundraiser, here is what Dare Odumade (Chekkit’s CEO) had to say;
“Since raising our pre-seed round of $500ki 2021, Chekkit has partnered and integrated its traceability and consumer intelligence solution with SAP (the global software giant) enabling pharmaceutical brands that already use SAP’s Advanced Track and Trace- platform to be able to collect and analyze last mile patient data obtained via user surveys embedded in the GS1 serial codes (unique identifiers used for product verification). The company has also integrated the GS1 global standards system, making our serialization software compliant with the regulations of over 100 countries globally.
Funds will be used to scale our team, technology and product distribution. We are expanding our team by hiring for more senior roles and launching in new countries such as India and the UK. India because 70% of the drugs sold in the MENA region are imported from India, while the UK gives us access to the Eurozone which is also responsible for producing a good deal of chronic drugs sent to Africa.
We use the blockchain (distributed ledger) to secure the unique identifiers we generate for products or ingest from our ERP partners to prevent duplication of serial codes and to also secure consumers’ personal information. In the near future, we will deploy an open source web3 API that will provide access to an ecosystem of third-party developers looking to develop solutions that can leverage this drug/CPG product data for developing inventory, shopping, shipping and payment solutions.”
Chekkit Technologies was founded in 2018 by Dare Odumade with the support of Oluwatosin Adelowo and Samuel Ukhueleigbe as co-founders. The 4-year-old start-up company has so far contributed to securing over 50 million pharmaceutical and consumer goods, and ensures that we end users always have access to safe and genuine products.
