{"id":144499,"date":"2023-04-25T07:17:58","date_gmt":"2023-04-25T07:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sap.com\/africa\/?p=144499"},"modified":"2023-09-27T17:40:16","modified_gmt":"2023-09-27T17:40:16","slug":"nigerian-anti-counterfeiting-startup-chekkit-secures-funding-to-scale-blockchain-powered-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.sap.com\/africa\/2023\/04\/nigerian-anti-counterfeiting-startup-chekkit-secures-funding-to-scale-blockchain-powered-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigerian Anti-counterfeiting Startup Chekkit Secures Funding to Scale Blockchain-powered Solution"},"content":{"rendered":"
Formed at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) in Accra, Ghana in 2018,\u00a0Chekkit\u00a0has built a platform that tracks product movement and the parties involved in the transfer of products from warehouse to distributor, and on to the final consumer.<\/p>\n
Essentially, Chekkit is an anti-counterfeiting, asset tracking and consumer feedback analytics tool. It produces tamper-proof unique ID labels, either as QR codes or numeric codes, which can be placed on premium packaged food and beverage products for supply chain and consumer feedback tracking.<\/p>\n
The startup has so far helped secure over 50 million pharmaceutical and consumer goods products, and is set for further growth after Nigeria\u2019s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) said pharmaceutical products would be mandated to implement end-to-end serialisation and traceability from the end of 2024.<\/p>\n
To help take advantage of this opportunity to scale, Chekkit has raised an undisclosed round of funding from Adaverse, a Cardano ecosystem accelerator, with participation from existing investors like RTA, HoaQ, Launch Africa Ventures, and Blockchain Founders Fund. This comes after Chekkit was announced as the first approved GS1\/NAFDAC traceability solutions provider in Nigeria, and\u00a0follows a US$500,000 pre-seed funding round it secured in 2021.<\/p>\n
The funds will help Chekkit onboard more manufacturers across Nigeria and other regions in Africa, while also expanding to new markets in India, UK and the Middle East.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince raising our pre-seed round of US$500,000 in 2021, Chekkit has partnered and integrated its pharmaceutical traceability and consumer intelligence solution with 麻豆原创, enabling pharmaceutical brands that already use 麻豆原创\u2019s Advanced Track and Trace Platform to be able to collect and analyse last-mile patient data. The company has also integrated the GS1 global standards system, making our serialisation software regulatory compliant in over 100 countries globally,\u201d said Dare Odumade, Chekkit\u2019s CEO.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are currently exploring opportunities to optimise and strengthen supply chains for other African and Middle Eastern regions through partnerships with major pharmaceutical donors, manufacturers, governments, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). We are focusing a side of the business on fixing the public pharmaceutical supply chains of these low to middle-income earning countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vincent Li, founding partner at Adaverse, said Chekkit was not just another anti-counterfeiting solution.<\/p>\n
\u201cRather, it aims to repair the prevailing rift in consumer-manufacturer trust with the blockchain-secured channel, prioritising consumer insights. We see the potential to transform the supply chain industry and disrupt the DataFi market and we\u2019re excited to support the scaling of Chekkit\u2019s infrastructure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n