AI-enabled digital health platform, Altibbi, has today announced a $44M raise in a just-concluded series B. In what will now be the single largest financing round for a regional Digital Health company, Altibbi has now raised more than $50M since its inception.
The heavily subscribed round brought together a number of strategic and financial advisors, led by Foundation Holdings and Hikma Ventures on top of existing investors Global Ventures and DASH Ventures. The Investment bank Awad Capital exclusively advised Altibbi for the transaction.
Altibbi’s diverse shareholder base also comprises high-profile investors Endeavor Catalyst, Middle East Venture Partners and Al-Rashed, among others. The company has also added to its board Jason Kothari, Senior Advisor at Foundation Holdings, for his distinguished experience and leadership.
“Altibbi is re-engineering healthcare, shifting the focus from sick care to preventative healthcare so that patients experience better health, and reduced costs. We fully believe and support their highly scalable, digital-first platform combined with their quality, virtual clinical operations to provide integrated, personalized healthcare. An integrated digital platform is no longer a nice to have in healthcare but is an essential tool to deliver a more efficient model of care.” said Lana Ghanem, Managing Director of Hikma Ventures.
The digital health market in numbers
2020 saw the global digital health market surpass $142B. Owing to a cumulative annual growth rate of over 15%, experts predict that the digital health services market will at least be worth $295B by 2028. This is being enabled by increasing technology penetration and integration with the Internet of Things (IoT), AI and mHealth technologies for self-management of diseases/ conditions.
With the remote healthcare market in the Middle East and North Africa projected to reach $2B in 2024, the opportunity for digital health providers like Altibbi is vastly untapped. 400M people in the Arab world lack access to basic health services, medical information and advice. 70% of doctors’ visits are unnecessary, inflicting a burden on the healthcare system. Moreover, the added strain of treating chronic disease patients further weighs down the system, making it less affordable.
Impacting healthcare in the Arab world
Altibbi is providing digital health services in the Middle East and North Africa with unrivalled scale and innovation. In its goal to provide reliable medical information to those who need it, the company hosts over two million pages of medical content in Arabic. Altibbi also provides 24/7 medical consultations via the internet to all Arab countries.
The company has to date conducted 4.5 million telehealth consultations, has 20 million unique visitors a month. This has been helped by the more than 1500 active certified doctors on its platform.
The company’s platform is an AI engine created by Altibbi’s leading team of data scientists, engineers and clinicians which provides a unique capability for a comprehensive patient solution.
The result of this has been cost-effective, quality healthcare for individuals, corporates, insurers, and the public sector. The company has impacted and fundamentally re-wired the healthcare value chain across the Arab World.
Altibbi and its plan for an IPO
Founded in Jordan and headquartered in Dubai, Altibbi is the Gulf Cooperation Council’s first and largest digital health platform. It was founded by Ayman Sharaiha, Hussein Abdelkarim and Jalil Allabadi in 2011, with the mission to put accessible, affordable and quality healthcare in the hands of every person in the Arab world.
With its newly acquired funding, Altibbi will expand the platform’s offering into online pharmacy and diagnostics collection to establish the region’s first end-to-end fully integrated primary care offering. This is in accordance with Saudi Vision 2030 and Egypt’s Ministry of Health and Population’s goal of providing high quality, affordable, accessible value-based healthcare. Altibbi will increase its investments in machine learning (ML) to further support doctors in providing more precise diagnostics, referrals and prescriptions.
Altibbi is aiming to be the region’s first publicly listed, high growth digital healthcare provider and the next digital unicorn in the GCC.
“Our objective is to support Altibbi to reach a superior position where its quality, exponential growth and trusted brand will enable them to be the first publicly listed digital health unicorn IPO in the GCC.” remarked Abhishek Sharma, CEO of Foundation Holdings.
