Japanese M3 Inc to invest in Africa Health Holdings Ltd to support its expansion plans

AFRICA – M3, Inc., a Tokyo-based medical Web portal, has announced that it will invest Africa Health Holdings Ltd, which operates medical facilities across Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya, via its multi-stage corporate venture fund 1P1Y.

Through this investment M3 will work to increase the productivity and sophistication of Africa Health’s facilities and support its expansion plans.

M3 will leverage its physician platform and services related to research, clinical trials, office appointment systems, medical site operations management, telemedicine and AI diagnostic technologies to support Africa Health.

Created in October 2019, the fund invests across seed and late-stage ventures including listed companies across the healthcare chain. These include pharmaceutical, medical devices, health management and health-tech. The fund has made around half a dozen investments already, mostly in Japan.

Africa Health is its second overseas investment; it had backed American cardiovascular medical device company Shape Memory Medical last May.

Cayman Islands-incorporated Africa Health is led by Sangu Delle. It operates 38 medical facilities across Ghana (Rabito Clinic group), Nigeria (CarePoint Hospitals group) and Kenya (Meridian Health Group). It also provides online medical services through its telemedicine application MyCareMobile.

The company says it has provided medical care to more than 510,000 patients.

The Japanese firm operates m3.com, a specialized web portal for medical professionals that delivers healthcare related information to more than 290,000 physicians in Japan and offers marketing and clinical trial services.

It has recently expanded into areas such as artificial intelligence-driven diagnostic tool development, genome diagnostics provision, and stroke rehabilitation centers.

M3, which commands a valuation of around US$53 billion, didn’t disclose the amount it plans to invest. The fund has a corpus of around JPY 10 billion (US$93 million) and seeks to invest up to US$19 million in a single company.

M3’s international presence spans the US, UK, France, China, South Korea and India.

M3 implements 7P Projects, which aim to integrate such businesses in order to provide holistic solutions for multiple issues within individual therapeutic areas that extend beyond pharmaceutical marketing.

Through this capital alliance, M3 will work to increase the productivity, sophistication, and acceleration in expansion of AHH’s medical facilities and of its digital technologies, through creation of solutions within the medical field that promote higher medical standards and wider access to medical care acrossAfrica.

To realize these objectives, M3 will leverage its physician platform and services related to research, clinical trials, office appointment systems, medical site operations management, telemedicine, AI diagnostic technologies and more, as well as the learnings gained through such service provision.