Egypt-based life science startup Nawah Scientific has sold a strategic stake to Essam Abdelhadi, the former vice president Middle East, Turkey, Africa and Pakistan (METAP) of Abbott, a US-based healthcare multinational, ahead of its upcoming Series A round.
Founded in 2015, Nawah Scientific is an online platform that receives experiment requests, collects samples, conducts tests and returns results digitally. Its aim is to enable scientists to conduct higher quality research, regardless of their location and owned lab facilities.
The startup has established itself as an integral part of Egypt’s pharmaceutical industry, and has so far analysed over 50,000 samples from more than 3,000 clients in nine countries.
Having concluded a US$1 million pre-Series A round earlier in the year, Nawah Scientific is now working on a Series A, and has part of that has secured backing from Abdelhadi and added him to its advisory board. The startup recently expanded to Jordan, and is also growing its offerings to pharmaceutical companies to include formulation development, stability studies, as well as all raw material and finished products quality control checks.
Dr Omar Sakr, Nawah’s founder and chief executive officer (CEO), said it was an honour to add Abdelhadi as an investor and advisor.
“He comes with immense experience in pharmaceutical industry, sales and marketing across the same geographical markets Nawah plans to expand to, in addition to deep hands-on expertise in managing operations at such scale. We could not wish for a better investor and advisor to help us manage our current rapid growth,” he said.
