UK pharmacies are currently struggling to cope with supply chain fluctuations, spiralling operating costs, record workforce shortages, and the predicted closure of up to 3000 high street pharmacy branches by 2024.
Phlo Technologies is a UK-based company building a digital pharmacy that delivers prescriptions directly to patients for both repeat and acute prescriptions. They are bringing much-needed digital transformation to the pharmacy sector – one of the most essential services that lagged behind in the rest of the digital health revolution.
Nadeem Sarwar founded Phlo Technologies in 2017 in his hometown of Glasgow. Today, they are the leading provider of B2B pharmacy services and direct-to-door medication delivery in the UK. Earlier this year, they announced an €11.5 million fundraise led by Thairm Bio and Scottish Enterprise and also their acquisition of one of their competitors, Truepill’s UK operations.
We caught up with Nadeem to learn about his journey of building Phlo Technologies and his insights about the future of health tech and pharma.
What challenges have you faced since scaling Phlo Technologies? How did you overcome them?
Phlo Technologies was founded six years ago (launching to market two years later in 2019) with a very small team and an ambition to spearhead digital transformation in the pharmacy sector. One of the first challenges we faced with our Phlo Digital Pharmacy brand was building trust with our NHS patients and empowering them to take control of their own healthcare and pharmacy experiences. We wanted to make managing medication easy, but patients were used to being passive in the pharmacy experience. We had to show that change was easy with Phlo!
For our Phlo Connect brand, the core challenge was demonstrating to potential healthcare partners that the 300-year-old pharmacy experience could be successfully digitised like other parts of the healthcare sector and other consumer sectors such as banking. Although this seems like a no-brainer today, at the time, the pharmacy was lagging behind the rest of the digital health sector when it came to enthusiasm or motivation to evolve. Once our early healthcare partners started reaping the benefits of replacing analogue, paper-based systems with connected digital systems, more and more providers began embarking on their own digital transformation projects with us. The lesson we learnt was that building a bank of success stories and generating a level of ‘FOMO’ amongst your target audience is the best way to gain traction in the early days.
Another challenge that we encountered came hand-in-hand with an opportunity for huge growth. At the end of 2022, we entered into the process of acquiring the UK arm of a US digital pharmacy unicorn – Truepill – which was also our biggest domestic competitors. Navigating the legal and regulatory hurdles around this process was not straightforward, but I’m hugely proud that we could successfully announce the completion of that acquisition in March of this year.
Phlo Technologies’ flagship Phlo Digital Pharmacy offers same-day medication delivery in Birmingham and London with plans to launch in Manchester and other major UK cities. How do you approach your strategy for expansion?
Our ultimate aim is to make same-day delivery available to everyone, but we believe in expanding slowly and carefully so that our service provision remains at a consistently high standard. We have recently seen several major digital health startups collapse, or suffer from bad patient reviews because they grew too quickly and tried to do too many things without perfecting their core offering first. That’s why we’re busy ensuring that our existing services are as effective, easy to use, secure and streamlined as they can be before we implement them in a new region.
As we pursue the expansion of our same-day delivery service, we continue to offer tracked next-day and 48-hour delivery to patients across the UK, so long as they are registered with a GP in England.
Phlo Technologies is headquartered in Glasgow. Could you tell us more about the Scottish startup scene and how it has benefited Phlo Technologies?
We’re in great company here in Scotland, scaling alongside a host of home-growth health techs including Current Health, Carcinotech and Waire Health. There is a strong and supportive tech ecosystem in Scotland, with key hubs across Ayrshire, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee. Since 2020, the Scottish government has invested almost €70 million into the tech sector, and this – alongside input from the country’s top universities – has helped nurture a strong community of entrepreneurs and ambitious startups.
It was my own participation in the Entrepreneurial Scotland Saltire Fellowship programme that allowed me to build a strong network in the tech community and refine many of the core skills that I’ve used to scale Phlo Technologies.
Congratulations on announcing your €11 million fundraise recently. It’s no secret that it’s been tougher to raise now than in the last few years with the challenging economic climate. Could you tell us more about your fundraising journey?
Thank you. I’d absolutely agree that it’s tough to raise right now, and I certainly took several important lessons from the process. We kicked off the raise in the spring of 2022, which was a turbulent time on account of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
We have visionary, strong and supportive investors who believe in what we do at Phlo Technologies. They have been instrumental in helping us achieve all that we have so far and will continue to achieve.
However, there’s rarely a ‘perfect’ time to enter a raised round – sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and learn how to thrive amidst imperfect circumstances. Phlo Technologies was on a strong footing throughout the year on account of our consistent growth metrics, but that didn’t mean we had an easy ride. Persistence, a strong belief in our vision, and a commitment not to compromise on our plans and standards were all key.
What advice could you offer to founders that are currently fundraising?
Your investors won’t be fooled by stories and smokescreens – at the end of the day, your company’s data, track record and growth forecast is what matters to them. But this doesn’t mean that the human element isn’t important in a successful raise – the relationships you build with prospective investors and the conversations you have are an invaluable part of the process.
As a founder, the raising process will drain your time and energy. You need to find a way to make sure that your company and your team don’t suffer as a result of this. Think about who can support you and the team when you’re not able to, and don’t be too proud to lean on others for support when you need it. And go easy on yourself! Every rejection from an investor shouldn’t be taken as a personal insult but as a chance to reflect and refine your approach before the next meeting. And there will be many rejections along the way!
What do you think the future of health tech will look like?
As digital interfaces and interactions become the norm across all domains of society, people are going to have increasingly higher expectations of providers in the health sector. Lately, we have seen artificial intelligence and machine learning start to play a big part in health tech. If integrated effectively, operations will be more streamlined and some of the pressure on healthcare providers will drastically reduce, but they’re never going to totally replace the role of the human in healthcare delivery. In saying that, there are some exciting developments with the utilisation of AI chatbot technology delivering human-machine interactions in the talk therapy space (Inicio AI).
To survive in an ever-more competitive market, health tech companies will need to meet demands for personalised, on-demand service provision, whilst also offering excellent user experiences and customer service. From the patient’s perspective, the success factor will be a seamless ease of use between all the touchpoints in their patient journey.
What are your predictions for the future of pharma in Europe?
The implementation of AI and more connected data systems in pharma and drug development is going to accelerate innovation and lower costs. The regulatory and data protection landscape will need to shift to keep pace with evolved ways of working with health data.
I expect to see more initiatives and investment towards ‘greening’ the drug development process and pharma supply chain, in tandem with AI-powered innovation and rapid discovery of new treatments.
What’s your vision for Phlo Technologies? What’s next?
Phlo Technologies is now the UK’s leading provider of B2B pharmacy services and direct-to-door medication delivery. This is a really exciting moment for us. Fresh off the back of our Series A fundraise and our acquisition of Truepill UK, we’re committed to strong business growth and the delivery of excellent end-to-end digital pharmacy experiences for clinicians, pharmacists and patients.
As we move into the second half of 2023 we’re planning to increase the user base of our flagship product, Phlo Digital Pharmacy, and empower more patients to take control of their healthcare. In the B2C space, we’re also developing our own Prescribing Pharmacist offerings, whereby patients can enjoy a seamless consultation, prescribing and dispensing experience with the Phlo Digital Pharmacy team they know and trust.
At Phlo Connect, our market-leading API-driven digital pharmacy infrastructure, we’re building out our tech product stack, enhancing current partnerships and expanding our range of valued partnerships. We’re currently working with some of the UK’s most innovative and successful digital health providers – including Babylon, Leva Clinic, skindoc, Syrona Health, The Lowdown, Levels, and The Dermatology Partnership – and we’re looking forward to supporting more pioneering health tech companies to offer unparalleled digital pharmacy service.
