Egyptian health and wellness platform Esaal raises $1.7M to scale across MENA – TechCrunch
Summary
Theres a vast unmet demand for medical consultation in developing markets like Egypt due to low doctor supply. As of 2018, Egypts doctor to citizen ratio stood at 1:2,000; you can paint a picture when you walk into any government hospital and see long queues.These problems and pandemic-changing habits have resulted in an uptake in doctor-booking and consultation apps across Egypt and the wider MENA region.Esaal, one such platform that has witnessed immense growth in the last two years, is announcing a $1.7 million seed investment from A15; this brings its total funding raised from the VC firm to $3 million since its launch in 2018.Esaal isnt only in the business of consultations on physical health. Its not common still; people would love to do it, said Fadi Doss, Esaal founder and CEO.Doss further narrated how hed browse on social media platforms and see people feel comfortable sharing personal problems, sometimes behind pseudonyms, while receiving feedback from other users who werent specialists in the subject matter. The companys revenues and ARPU also increased 250% to $4.4 million in 2021 and 130% between 2020 and 2021.Doss said Esaal services are available in seven other countries across MENA and the GCC: Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Palestine and Iraq.The companys revenues show that it has run a capital-efficient business with just $3 million, an investment that came in tranches since 2019 from its sole investor, A15.They have been prudent in the deployment of capital to date, demonstrating outstanding efficiencies in unit economics, which has enabled their expansion ambitions, said Karim Beshara, the firms managing partner on the investment. He also stressed another subtle difference: While other platforms focus on doctor consultations, mental health or nutrition like Vezeeta, Meddy and Shezlong, Esaal merges the three verticals into one.The online health and wellness consultation platform plans to use this investment to scale across MENA, invest in product and brand development and hire more talent.