Nigerian anti-counterfeiting startup Chekkit secures funding to scale blockchain-powered solutions

Nigerian anti-counterfeiting startup Chekkit has secured additional funding to help it scale its blockchain-powered drug security and tracking solution.

Formed at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) in Accra, Ghana in 2018, Check it out has built a platform that tracks product movement and the parties involved in the transfer of products from warehouse to distributor, and on to the end consumer.

Essentially, Chekkit is an analytics tool for anti-counterfeiting, asset tracking and consumer feedback. 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 tracking and consumer feedback.

The startup has so far helped secure over 50 million pharmaceuticals and consumables, and is poised for further growth after Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) said pharmaceuticals will be mandated to implement end- to end serialization and traceability from the end of 2024.

To help capitalize on this opportunity to scale, Chekkit has raised an undisclosed round of funding from Adaverse, a Cardano ecosystem accelerator, with participation from existing investors such as 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 follows a USD 500,000 pre-seed funding round it secured in 2021.

The funds will help Chekkit with more manufacturers across Nigeria and other regions of Africa, while expanding into new markets in India, the UK and the Middle East.

“Since raising our $500,000 pre-seed round in 2021, Chekkit has partnered and integrated its pharmaceutical traceability and consumer intelligence solution with SAP, enabling pharmaceutical brands that already use SAP’s Advanced Track and Trace platform to be able to collect and analyze last-mile patient data. The company has also integrated the GS1 global standards system, making our serialization software compliant with regulations in over 100 countries globally, says Dare Odumade, Chekkit’s CEO.

“We are currently exploring opportunities to optimize and strengthen supply chains for other African and Middle Eastern regions through partnerships with major pharmaceutical donors, manufacturers, governments and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). We are focusing part of our business on fixing the public pharmaceutical supply chains in these low- and middle-income countries.”

Vincent Li, founder of Adaverse, said Chekkit was not just another anti-counterfeiting solution.

“Rather, it aims to repair the prevailing rift in consumer-producer trust with the blockchain-secured channel, prioritizing consumer insights. We see the potential to transform the supply chain industry and disrupt the DataFi market, and we are excited to support the scaling of Chekkit’s infrastructure,” said he.