OneHealth bets on PillFinda to tackle Nigeria’s drug shortages

Nigeria’s pharmacies and health centres operate in a notoriously fragile pharmaceutical supply chain. Essential medicines regularly go out of stock, and retail pharmacies often depend on a patchwork of open-drug markets, middlemen, and informal distributors to replenish inventory. As a result, Nigeria’s unavailability of essential medicines at pharmacies sits at nearly 65%, one of the highest in Africa.

At the same time, the continent’s online pharmacy and B2B drug-procurement sector is growing, valued at over $560 million in 2022. Players like DrugStoc, Remedial Health, and Pharmarun already anchor parts of this value chain. Yet Nigeria still lags behind its peers in digital procurement adoption, leaving space for newer entrants to propose alternatives to the long-standing distribution inefficiencies.

OneHealth, a Lagos-based online pharmacy and health-tech company founded in 2019, is one of those entrants. The company runs a direct-to-consumer (D2C) online pharmacy offering prescription fulfillment, telehealth, and chronic care support. It claims to have served “tens of thousands” of customers across multiple Nigerian states, and has gradually expanded into healthtech products, including a medication subscription service and home diagnostics. Now, the company says it wants to tackle the deeper structural challenges that constrain its consumer business: the reliability and cost of medicines.

Its new product, PillFinda, is a B2B procurement marketplace that aims to give pharmacies and hospital dispensaries access to real-time inventory data, coordinated logistics, and a structured channel for sourcing essential and hard-to-find drugs.

“There have been difficulties where pharmacies struggle with drug procurement for their stocking, or maybe they just need drugs that are scarce or hard to find,” Babatunde Oguntona, PillFinda’s sales manager, told . “Sometimes, they have to go to different manufacturers or multiple vendors to be able to restock. But with this solution, what we are trying to do is to ensure that access to medication end-to-end is being covered.”

Nigeria’s existing procurement pathways make that ambition clear. Most pharmacies still rely on major open drug markets like Idumota in Lagos or Sabon Gari in Kano, where prices shift daily with FX swings, and quality control is inconsistent. Others depend on regional wholesalers who lack digital systems, forcing pharmacists to spend hours calling multiple suppliers. Most time-pressed pharmacies outsource sourcing to informal procurement agents, often at a markup.

PillFinda attempts to simplify this process by allowing pharmacies to browse available stock, place orders digitally, request products, and track deliveries through OneHealth’s logistics arm, PillMova. “If you’re looking for a particular brand or product that you cannot find on the platform, you make a request and upload the name and exact picture, and we will source it for you,” Victoria Ifeonye, the platform’s product manager, explained.

But the B2B drug-distribution market is already crowded and highly competitive.

DrugStoc, one of the sector’s strongest incumbents, runs a licenced supply-chain network for pharmacies and hospitals in Nigerian states; Remedial Health provides inventory, software, data and financing solutions to healthcare providers in Africa; and Pharmarun aggregates pharmacy inventories for consumers and businesses. These platforms rely heavily on licensed distributors and, in some cases, run their own micro-distribution hubs, offering competitive pricing through negotiated bulk agreements.

Compared to these companies, PillFinda does not yet operate large-scale warehousing or a nationwide network of distribution hubs. Oguntona says the platform’s differentiation lies in tighter logistics integration and deeper data tracking. PillFinda can monitor buying patterns and predict when a pharmacy is likely to run out of fast-moving products. That data, he said, allows for proactive restocking: “We can understand their buying pattern, what they purchase often, and then suggest when it’s time to restock,” he said.

Nigeria’s pharmaceutical market is price-sensitive due to foreign exchange and tax. To keep pharmacies financially afloat, PillFinda incorporates a credit system that allows pharmacies to buy now and pay later, within controlled, monitored limits.

“We give pharmacies a credit system,” Oguntona said. “But we monitor their credit behaviour, so we don’t give beyond what they can handle. That helps us stay profitable while supporting them.”

PillFinda’s pricing model sits on traditional wholesale margins. The platform buys from manufacturers and licenced distributors, applies a markup, and sells to pharmacies. But because drug prices in Nigeria fluctuate with foreign exchange and import costs, OneHealth says it adjusts prices frequently based on supplier costs. The company also expects to earn from its credit system, offering short-term financing to pharmacies but capping limits based on repayment behaviour to reduce risk.

Yet, the platform faces the same obstacles that have constrained others in the sector:  Logistics costs remain high nationwide, regulatory compliance is complex, and many small pharmacies are slow to adopt digital tools. “We work with the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria (PCN) as well to ensure that we are obviously complying with all the laws and rights of medication supplies,” Ifeonye said.

That strategy helps keep product prices stable for pharmacies but also suggests PillFinda is still constrained by the same market realities as other platforms, particularly those without exclusive manufacturer partnerships or large warehouse capacity. Players with deeper supply-side leverage tend to shape pricing; others must react to it.

“We currently have another challenge with price margins with competitors,” Ifeonye acknowledged. “ But how we are solving that is that we adjust pricing based on our supplier costs, because we look for cheaper suppliers that give us medication at a very affordable rate.”

Despite these constraints, OneHealth views PillFinda as more than an extension of its consumer business. The company aims to expand its distribution capabilities across West Africa and eventually build what it hopes will become a regional pharmaceutical supply-chain engine. For now, OneHealth’s move signals an intention to play in the deeper layers of pharmaceutical infrastructure. The question is whether it can build enough scale to shift the system rather than merely navigate it.