The digital medicine for pharmacies: How AI is powering Kenya's chemists

Meanwhile, being online through Zendawa has increased Ryche's client base, resulting in a jump in minimum daily sales to 20,000 Kenyan shillings (about $154) from 12,000 Kenyan shillings, he says.

Zendawa's AI tool, which incorporates Microsoft 365 Copilot throughout, not only aims to speed up this business intelligence for pharmacies, but it also helps forecast their needs, to give them a longer time frame to help them predict and prepare for customer flow. Pharmacies can monitor their different business gauges on Zendawa's unified dashboard.

For example, if a pharmacy is out of one kind of a drug, the pharmacist might suggest another that serves the same purpose. "That is not a best practice," Chege says. Yet "stocking five variations of the same drug from different manufacturers is very capital intensive." Zendawa aggregates market data and uses Microsoft's Power BI business intelligence tool with AI to detect trends in which, say, malaria drug is being prescribed more, so pharmacists order accordingly in advance.

Further leveraging Microsoft's Power BI, Zendawa creates a credit score for the pharmacy. "It's our own scoring system and so far, we've not had any mismatch," Chege says. "Normally, if they need drugs, the payment is on delivery or if they need an inventory financing, that is now where the credit embedded financing comes in."

The credit score created by Zendawa, based on cash flow and several other factors, allows pharmacies to apply for financing from some licensed credit providers that focus on small and medium-sized businesses.