Beyond Capital Fund Supports Healthcare Innovation Initiatives With Investment in India’s Redwing Labs

By AIT News Desk On Feb 26, 2021

Partnership with Healthcare Drone Logistics Startup Arrives in Time for Pandemic Response Efforts in Rural Areas Around the World

Beyond Capital, an impact investment fund that invests in companies seeking solutions to improve the lives of people living at the bottom of the economic pyramid in India and East Africa, is pleased to announce its recent investment in Redwing Labs, a healthcare drone logistics company that aims to optimize the delivery of time-critical medical supplies in hard-to-reach regions and crisis situations. The partnership marks Beyond Capital’s third investment in the past 12 months. Redwing Labs raised a $1 million seed investment round led by ITI Growth Opportunities Fund, along with participation from Asymmetry Ventures, Cloud Capital, LetsVenture and current and former executives from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Microsoft and Google.

Redwing Labs was founded by engineers Anshul Sharma, Arunabha Bhattacharya, and Rishabh Gupta to create large-scale impact by solving inefficiencies in the healthcare supply chain. In India and many developing countries, there is a pervasive problem concerning the lack of access to resources at the last mile. This ongoing issue leads to poor health outcomes, including inadequate access to medicine (which is responsible for 27 percent of preventable deaths in these areas), deficient access to timely diagnostics, and high maternal mortality rates due to postpartum hemorrhage.

Redwing Labs is building a virtual cold chain for healthcare logistics by using an on-demand drone network. This end-to-end technology stack delivers various emergency and routine healthcare products, reducing the need for refrigerators at hospitals and decreasing wastage in the supply chain by delivering cold-chain products like blood, vaccines, anti-venoms, and cardiac medicines.

Redwing Labs utilizes a proprietary drone design that is capable of Hybrid VTOL flight, which brings together vertical take-off landing capabilities with long-range travel that can accurately deliver packages within a range of 50 kilometers. This also makes the drones capable of multiple stops and reverse logistics, enabling individuals living in remote areas access to faster diagnosis of a condition and timely medical care.

The company is building a hub-and-spoke distribution model, where a hub serves as the distribution center for health products, and spokes are primary and community healthcare centers and hospitals. This model ensures delivery is 4x faster compared to conventional transportation and is independent of poor road infrastructure in the developing world.

“Redwing Labs’ number one mission is to help save lives,” said Sharma of his company’s genesis. “Our focus is on safe, reliable, and repeatable operations conducted in a phased manner to build trust with investors, regulators, and the public along the way. Our business has the potential to change the health outcomes of potentially millions of people.”

In response to the global Covid-19 pandemic, the company aims to partner with the departments of healthcare of various states, private hospitals, and vaccine distributors to establish and execute a widespread delivery system servicing rural populations.

This investment, which is being matched by Beyond Capital co-investing partner the Eckenstein Geigy Stiftung, will allow Redwing Labs to further develop its technology stack and build key partnerships throughout the healthcare industry.

“The Beyond Capital team is thrilled to collaborate with conscious leaders like Anshul, Arunabha, and Rishabh in expanding their company’s operations and furthering their ambitious goals of delivering life-saving medicines via drone technology,” commented Eva Yazhari, CEO of Beyond Capital. “That our partnership with Redwing Labs comes during a global pandemic creates even more urgency and need for this essential type of healthcare innovation.”