Nigerian Business Executive, Mmekidmfon Umanah boasts of 7 years of Management and Leadership experience working in the Health, Tech and Non-profit sectors. He currently leads Aimcare Health, a health tech startup interested in disrupting the West African Pharma sector through efficient distribution, innovative financing and inventory management solutions. In this interview, he talks about his recent win at the Future Awards Prize for Health and Wellness and more…
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Congratulations on winning the Future Awards Prize for Health and Wellness in 2023. What does this recognition mean to you, and how do you plan to leverage it for your work at Aimcare Health?

Thank you very much! It means a lot to me and for two key reasons. First is that; the Future Awards is simply a big deal, long story short. It has been described by the World Bank as “the Nobel Prize for young Africans”, and by Forbes as the “most important youth award”. To win it is not a fluke at all, because there is a four-stage, three-month-long judging process involving a board of judges and an audit committee. Judges come from all over Africa. Therefore winning the Prize for Health and Wellness is a strong validation of the work we are doing at Aimcare Health.

The second reason is that I do not have any medical background; I only came into healthcare because I lost my mother in 2013 to an avoidable health issue. As an only child, I still carry this pain around every day. Aimcare, and my work generally, is my consolation that I am contributing to a healthier Nigeria. Therefore, winning the Future Award is an affirmation that I have not been wasting my time all these years

You’ve had leadership roles in the Health, Tech, and Nonprofit sectors. How has your diverse background shaped your approach to running Aimcare Health and driving innovation in healthcare?

My background is in Corporate Strategy, and the unique skill I have is the ability to “see the end from the beginning”, and to chart a path of getting there. As I already mentioned, I am not a Doctor or Pharmacist et al, but I have come into health as an outsider looking in, and with a fresh pair of eyes. And this has helped build Aimcare with a first-principle thinking approach.
Having prior experience working across multiple sectors has allowed me to gain valuable experience in solving different problems, working with a wide range of colleagues and just being a lot more well-rounded. And I believe Aimcare has benefitted from all these.
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Can you share some insights into your early life and upbringing? What values or experiences from your childhood have influenced your career choices and leadership style?

I did not grow up with much, but I grew up in and with so much love. Although I am my mother’s only child, I was surrounded by lots of cousins friends and loved ones. My parents believed education is a leveller and thus even though we did not have much, they made sure I went to the best schools in the state. My parents taught me the value of hard work and grinding it out. My mother was the most hardworking person I know, she started as a nurse and ended up as a Chartered Accountant while running several small businesses, so it is not surprising that I have ended up running several companies and juggling that with an intensive PhD programme.

As the leader of Aimcare Health, can you tell us more about the core mission and vision of the company, and how it aims to disrupt the West African Pharma sector?
Yeah so, for 80% of people in Africa, their community pharmacy and patent medicine stores are the first point of call when they have medical needs, making these providers very crucial players in Africa’s primary healthcare system. Yet they struggle with access to finance and inventory management. How do pharmaceutical retailers know how much stock they need at a time? How do they know which products to stock at a given time? How do they know what products aren’t selling with ease? At the moment, there’s not enough data to answer these questions. Cash gets tied up; there are more or fewer products than are needed at a particular time. If it’s the former, they run a risk of selling expired products. If it’s the latter, patients can’t get what they need.

Aimcare is a pharmaceutical procurement platform for healthcare providers to source the medications, consumables, and small medical devices they need. We cater to a growing network of 150 healthcare providers by giving access to safe pharmaceutical products through our consolidated supply chain system. Our combination of flexible financing and last-mile delivery enables us to cater to resource-constrained pharmacies and clinics, thus ensuring superior accessibility and availability of essential medical products
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Aimcare Health has been named one of the top 29 Healthcare innovators in Africa by prestigious organizations like Bill and Melinda Gates, Microsoft, MSD, Cencora, and Chemonics. Could you tell us about the role of collaboration and partnerships in the success of Aimcare Health, especially in light of the grant support from these organizations?

Partnerships have been a big pillar for us at Aimcare. We bootstrapped everything at the start and had to be creative with resources. And part of that involved leveraging partnerships for things like customer acquisition. Throughout our existence, partnerships and collaboration have been super helpful to us. But this new opportunity with the Investing in Innovation Africa (i3) is a game changer for us because it opens us up to very exciting opportunities for collaborating with lots of major global players like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Chemonics, Microsoft etc to advance our mission.

Share some insights into the innovative solutions that set Aimcare apart in the healthcare sector.
We are working on a few solutions that broadly cover three key areas: Technology, Financing, and Distribution. And largely tackles three main challenges; Availability, accessibility and quality. One of our main solutions is that Aimcare takes the burden and risk of inventory off the pharmacies. It manages forecasting, quality assurance, fulfilment and inventory management. Pharmacies sell Aimcare-supplied goods on consignment through a pay-as-you-sell program, avoiding expiry risk and accessing a cheaper alternative to working capital finance. This model allows pharmacies to grow an average of 25% CAGR.
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Could you tell us more about your ongoing PhD research at King’s College London and how it relates to leveraging digital technologies for social ventures in Africa?

Summarily, my PhD research explores ways in which social ventures leverage the unique affordances offered by digital technologies to configure sustainable business models and operations, as well as balance competing pro-social and profit goals. The research is based on the premise that business is one of the most powerful engines of change to move developing and emerging economies to greater development. With Africa’s population projected to grow to 2.4 billion by 2050, there is an urgent need for the emergence of more social innovators, operating at scale, to address important problems in sectors from education to healthcare and the process creates a significant number of jobs for the continent’s booming population. By creating important knowledge on how social entrepreneurs can leverage digital innovation and technology to balance doing good and doing well, this research can provide a template of “success” for those just starting or thinking of charting a new path for themselves or their companies. It can also be useful for policymakers and governments interested in creating policies to encourage and support sustainable businesses across Africa

You have achieved a significant amount at a relatively young age. How do you maintain a work-life balance and ensure that you continue to grow both personally and professionally?

To be honest, I do not think I have particularly figured out a work-life balance yet. I think that if you want to be in the top 5%, at the early stages of your career, you should worry less about work-life balance otherwise someone else will eat your lunch. In the grand scheme, I believe I am still at the earliest stage of my career, so there is a lot more work to be done. And that is not to say that you should not have any social life or aim towards a balance. I stay in touch with my friends and family and have a fantastic support system for my wife. I play golf and play FIFA when I can.

Could you share some specific challenges you’ve encountered while leading Aimcare Health and how you’ve overcome them to achieve success?

The dollar instability has been a big challenge for our work. We have a few foreign partners that supply us with their often very innovative products for us to represent them in the Nigerian market. And the dollar situation has made some of those business deals difficult to execute optimally.

Also, capital is very expensive in Nigeria. If you want to get some debt financing to support your scale-up, the interest rates from lenders are just crazy in the country. So, businesses like ours almost always have to spend lots of time trying to raise foreign investments, and trust me it is a full-time job, it takes a lot of time from your actual operations.
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With your experience as the Country Director for DOT Glasses in Nigeria, how have you applied the lessons learned to your work at Aimcare Health, especially in terms of brand building and marketing strategies?

DOT is a fantastic company, and it was my pleasure to serve as Country Manager in Nigeria until I handed over to one of my colleagues. I became Country Manager at 27, so I learnt a lot on the job. Particularly in terms of building mutually beneficial partnerships across the public and private sectors. Naturally, I have brought those skillsets to Aimcare. As I already mentioned, partnerships are super important to us. From pharmacies, clinics, and PPMVs to donors, and governments, our entire business model is built around working with others. So, some of the first pharmacies we worked with were a result of our partnership with a great aggregator channel.

Aimcare Health is operating in the West African region. What unique challenges and opportunities do you see in this market, and how does the company adapt to them?
Healthcare in Africa is still very fragmented. Across the entire value chain. This means for a continent with a little over 1.4 billion people, more than half are without adequate access to healthcare. But this also presents incredibly huge opportunities, because the health market in Africa is $62b and projected at $259 billion by 2030 (IFC). I think my advice would be that companies in the space solve for the customers. That is focused on building solutions that people need, and not what they think people need.
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How do you balance your pursuit of profit as a business executive and your pursuit of purpose working in the nonprofit sector?

Aimcare is a for-profit business. So, I do not currently work in the non-profit sector. However, we are a social venture and I am a big advocate for inclusive capitalism. I believe in innovators using market-based approaches to solve important social issues. The challenge is that very often social ventures find themselves mission drifting – a gradual drift towards one of their logics or forms or identities at the expense of others or in some cases ceasing operations without accomplishing their missions. So, it was helpful for me to spend a few years in the non-profit sector to learn how to run purpose-driven organisations and stay on course. Generally, combining profit and purpose sustainably in the long term is not easy, it is why I am studying it for a PhD.

What advice do you have for young entrepreneurs and leaders who aspire to make a meaningful impact in the healthcare sector, particularly in Africa?
I think my advice would be that companies in the space solve for the customers. That is focused on building solutions that people need, and not what they think people need. It is very easy to speculate on what users want, and consequently throw lots of resources and efforts towards solving these perceived problems. It doesn’t always work. The better way to solve problems is to be customer-obsessed. Talk to as many customers as you can, and understand what the core pain points are, then solve for those. Do not assume. First principle thinking!
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