Cura
Riyadh-based telehealth company whose app connects patients with doctors by chat, voice and video. It closed a SAR 15 million Series A led by Wa'ed and Elm in 2021.
Industry: Telehealth | Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia | Founded: 2016 | Total Funding: USD 4M
About Cura
Cura is a Saudi telehealth company, based in Riyadh, that connects patients with licensed doctors for remote consultations. Gulf News describes it as the first licensed telemedicine company in the Kingdom. Stanford Graduate School of Business, which published a case study on the company, dates its founding to 2016, while a 2016 Wamda article says the founders began work in 2015. The founders named in 2021 coverage are Wael Kabli, who is chief executive, and Mohammad Zekrallah, both software engineers. Wamda's 2016 profile also named Abdullah Alswaha as a co-founder and said the idea came from his own difficulty booking a specialist appointment; none of the three had a healthcare background at the time. The service works as a directory and messaging network. Patients can reach doctors through text, voice and video and can share files, and prescriptions can be issued after a consultation. Forbes Middle East describes it as a platform for consultations and prescriptions through messaging and video on mobile phones. The company graduated from the 9/10ths accelerator at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, and KAUST Innovation has written about how its business grew during the COVID-19 pandemic. The scale of the platform has been reported at different dates. Forbes Middle East listed more than 2,400 registered doctors, over 500,000 users and more than 285,000 consultations, and said Cura operated in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. By October 2021 Gulf News reported more than 4,500 doctors signed up, and that Cura's licensed technology had powered over 2.8 million consultations on Sehha, the Saudi Ministry of Health's telemedicine app. Consultations from outside Saudi Arabia made up about 5 percent of its customer base then, and the founders were planning international expansion. According to Wamda's 2016 report, Cura was initially bootstrapped and funded by Alswaha. In October 2021 it closed a SAR 15 million Series A round, about USD 4 million, according to Wamda, Gulf News and GCC Business News. The round was led by Wa'ed, the entrepreneurship arm of Saudi Aramco, and Elm, the Saudi information security and digital solutions company. Forbes Middle East lists total funding of about USD 6 million, and lists Enmaa for Business as an earlier investor. The money was earmarked to improve the whole patient journey and add services such as at-home blood sample collection and health benefits for employees offered with insurers.
Leadership
- Wael Kabli, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
- Mohammad Zekrallah, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer