Close to 1,400 Africans die of falsified drugs daily. Can this ambitious upstart make a difference?

Gwangeru, 55, gave his best to his five-year-old Asampe. His last gift to her was the only inheritance he got from his father: a tiny piece of land arable enough for local vegetables, which now housed the dead bodies of Asampe and her friend, both casualties from yet another case of poisonous medications administered at a local hospital in The Gambia. About 67 other children died in the incident last year, adding to a painfully long list of Africans whose deaths were consequences of seeking medical aid. Their deaths could have been prevented if a reliable infrastructure for vetting drugs was in place. Chekkit wants to build that infrastructure.

“We are building the fabric for end-to-end traceability; everything needed to trace products from manufacturers to final consumers,” said the company’s CEO, Dare Odumade, in an interview with NODO. Odumade started Chekkit in 2018, right after witnessing a patient die from failing kidneys ruptured by counterfeit drugs. He then assembled a research team that would later discover a rather discomforting trend: Africans’ price sensitivity makes them prone to consuming counterfeit drugs so long the drugs made it to local pharmaceutical stores. The result? Half a million fake drugs-linked deaths on the continent, yearly.

Chekkit’s suite of solutions includes a consumer-facing app that confirms product authenticity by scanning Chekkit-issued labels on products. For the promise of redeemable loyalty points, customers can further interact with products by answering survey questions that provide market insights for stakeholders. While this model works for verifying authenticity, it does little to spot counterfeit drugs in the market. Odumade told NODO that in the coming year, he hopes to launch an AI-powered feature that provides extra information about drugs being verified on the app, including images of other fake drugs in the market.

“We also provide IoT-powered tracking abilities for products that require real-time location services. This provides some sort of insurance for businesses offering buy-now-pay-later services. Even in the remotest of villages, our technology picks up geolocation signals,” Odumade shared proudly.

Chekkit’s model involves loading the products’ metadata into a blockchain ledger that enables the immutability of the serial codes the company generates. This process serves as verification that the products originated from Chekkit's partner manufacturers. Chekkit generates revenue by providing tailored offerings to manufacturers or distributors, typically in the form of APIs integrated into inventory or ERP systems such as SAP. This integration facilitates product tracking using Chekkit's GS1-standard serial codes. Chekkit also offers market intelligence services as a SaaS product. “We mostly serve Fortune 500 companies and charge our clients around $40,000 for our services,” Odumade revealed.

The root of the drug pandemic

A Bloomberg investigation into the earlier referenced case of medical poisoning revealed that the drugs’ Indian manufacturers, Maiden, were themselves victims of a manipulated supply chain where soaring demand for chemicals was met by malicious profit-seeking actors. The investigations inferred that Maiden may have unwittingly obtained the lethal ethylene glycol in an attempt to procure propylene glycol, a key ingredient for cough syrups. A similar occurrence in Africa’s porous, largely unregulated supply chain could mean that local manufacturers are prone to producing drugs that could potentially harm consumers.

Odumade argues that such possibilities are slight, as manufacturers are required to double-check the chemical composition of their ingredients in the drug-producing process. “They [local manufacturers] are not victims. Many times, they contract global manufacturers and specifically request for them to use cheaper, substandard chemicals. That way, they make a lot of money and have the goods branded in respected global names,” he said. “It happens often with narcotics like tramadol and codeine.”

A lot of powerful people are aware of this, Odumade pointed out. “It’s a power play.”

“We’ve got partners that provide us with the tools we can use to check the chemical composition of drugs. This, with traceability solutions, is the holistic solution to the false drug pandemic,” he shared.

Building for a global market

Chekkit started its research in Ghana and launched in Nigeria, but believes its product is for the world. A partnership with the Fantom Foundation Team drove Chekkit’s expansion to Afghanistan in 2021. Still, Odumade says further expansion to new markets is underway. Europe, India, and the Middle East are some of the markets on Chekkit’s master plan.

"To date, our company has serialized over 200 million products and traced an additional 200 million items for more than 35 brands across Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Afghanistan. Engaging with over 1.5 million consumers has allowed us to gather valuable data and insights," Odumade said about his company’s traction. Chekkit earned recognition as the best commerce tech solution in Africa at the 2021 Global Startup Awards and recently participated in the Google For Startups global alumni summit. Odumade claims Chekkit has raised about $1 million across pre-seed and extension rounds over the past three years and is looking to raise $5 million in a seed round starting next year.

Nigeria, Chekkit’s core market where it is currently bidding for a state-backed pharmacovigilance project, is facing an economic crisis that has driven hyperinflation of drug prices. Going by Chekkit’s research, this could translate to a boon for fake medical products in the nation of over 200 million people. “Battling the issue of counterfeiting is one of the core reasons we exist. As long as manufacturers of counterfeit products persist, Chekkit and its solutions will remain steadfast in the fight,” Odumade said.