Otida Raises $340K Pre-Seed
With a goal to improve the lives of 5,000 patients this year, Otida has raised $340K in a pre-seed round.
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Egyptian health-tech startup Otida raised $340K in a pre-seed round led by Lofty Inc., a Texas-based VC, with the participation of Flat6Labs Cairo, Jedar Capital, OQAL Angel Investors, UI Investments and some angel investors.
Otida is an app that acts as a nutritionist, a fitness coach and physician, among other roles, for patients with diabetes who struggle while navigating through their day-to-day lives. Otida has a tech solution to help alleviate the pains of patients struggling with diabetes in Egypt and the Middle East.
Last year, the Egyptian ecosystem grew by 176% YoY to hit record-high VC funding as seen in the Egypt 2022 Venture Investment Report. Similar to trends in the Middle East and Africa, FinTech led the deal flow activity in Egypt observing a 4% YoY growth to account for 17% of total transactions in 2021. Whereas, Transport & Logistics raised the lion's share of capital driven by multi-integrated FinTech ecosystem and debt solutions provider MNT-Halan's $120M Mega Round. This was followed by E-commerce with B2B E-commerce startup MaxAb closing $40M in Series A. The HealthTech sector raked in $26M with pharmaceutical and supplement online marketplace Yodawy raising $7.5M and IoT-driven clinic CRM solutions provider SoTech, and HealthTech and Heath Information management provider Bypa-ss raising $1M each.
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Diabetes has been recently declared as a global pandemic, owing to its unprecedented magnitude. More than one in every ten people around the world is currently living with diabetes; 90% of whom have type 2, which is often milder than type 1 but can also lead to deadly health issues such as heart diseases and strokes. Moreover, it is estimated that every 30 seconds a lower limb or part of a lower limb is lost somewhere in the world as a consequence of diabetes. Egypt ranked 9th in diabetic population and is plagued with a fast-growing health problem with a significant impact on morbidity, mortality, and health care resources.
The current care model for diabetes is ineffective, reactive to symptoms, lacks personalizations, depends solely on medications and adds the whole responsibility on doctors alone. The care model for diabetes is considered incompetent due to the poor quality of data gathered. The blood tests taken only when the patient presents their case to a new physician are not representative enough to build effective treatment programs. That happens because the health care system doesn’t take into account the inconsistencies of each patient’s body; for example, their blood levels could be performing abnormally on the date the test was taken for any given reason.
Otida aims to defy this approach. It collects a minimum of 100 data points, per patient, per day, to tailor a personalized care model for each user on the app. Once signed up for Otida, patients receive wearables to read blood sugar levels every 15 minutes and report back to the cloud without having to have the patients prick their fingers with an archaic blood sugar monitor. That is in addition to the data collected from the patients, such as food consumed, the medication prescribed, and periodical lab tests. That way, the app learns a lot about the patient’s nutrition, glycemic responses to different food and medications, their lifestyle and behavior. Each patient gets assigned a coach who is available around the clock. Otida also educates its patients about their individual conditions and how they can measure their insulin and blood levels and how they can use that data to improve their lifestyles.
Ahmed Tawfic, founder and CEO of Otida said, “Otida’s business model revolves around the needs of patients with diabetes. We believe that with the level of technology we are surrounded by today, it’s unacceptable to have patients with diabetes still struggling to find the right treatment program that fits each individual condition.”
This round will help the team productize Otida’s operations and expand distribution to reach more patients. Mona AbdelMoteleb, Medical Director of Otida added, “We have patients with type 2 diabetes who were insulin dependent, with Otida’s guidance they stopped taking it and stopped depending on medications altogether. We want to be a companion to help diabetic patients live a normal, happy life.”
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