Adeola Ayoola is the CEO/Co-Founder at Famasi Africa – a pharmacy infrastructure that allows individuals and businesses to connect to pharmacies in emerging markets. She has spent over eight years working across the pharmaceutical sector – retail, hospital, primary health centre, wholesale, and distribution – closely with people who have medication needs and understand what it means to be a provider.

Famasi came into existence when a pharmacist and a product storyteller merged their 13 years of friendship to solve healthcare challenges they experienced. Having worked as an accounts manager at mPharma, working closely with pharmacies to improve access to medications, Adeola realised there was a huge opportunity in facilitating last-mile access to medications, especially for people with recurrent medication needs.

Famasi Africa launched in 2021, aiming to build an online pharmacy. The goal was to simplify medications for everyone, especially people with recurrent medication needs. However, the obvious lack of infrastructure meant they had to build theirs from scratch and expand their focus to not just simplify medications, but to accelerate digital health for Africans. To put this pharmacy infrastructure in place across Africa, they are building the OS for pharmacies to connect individuals and businesses to their medications faster. Their fundamental belief is that people who use medications, especially on a recurrent basis, often need more than a pharmacy or an online pharmacy, they need a pharmacy that cares, and that’s exactly what Famasi Africa is.

When they launched their waitlist, their plan was to build a digital pharmacy that automates refills for people with recurrent medications. During their alpha and eventually beta, they got inbound requests from other states in Nigeria. So, to avoid being asset-heavy and drowning in OpEx, they decided to partner with existing pharmacies in those states.

While doing this, and travelling across five of the six geo-political zones in Nigeria to talk to pharmacies, they learnt quickly that there was no software built for pharmacies. Without an updated inventory software, there was no transparency into what was available which made it tedious and slow to deliver the efficient care people need.

Armed with customer research, they built dispensary v1 — an android inventory and POS software that helps pharmacies manage their operations, track their inventory and improve insights all from one terminal. This terminal eliminates the typical set-up of a desktop/laptop, a POS and a mobile scanner. With these terminals, they aggregate small and big pharmacies, and connect individuals and businesses to their medications faster.

Beyond pharmacies, they have partnered with physicians, telemedicine providers and diagnostics to personalise care for individuals.