First of all, tell us about yourself
Davis, Dr. Davis Musinguzi is a Medical Doctor and Digital Health Entrepreneur from Uganda. I am the Chief Executive Officer & Founder of Rocket Health, a telemedicine company that has been operating in Uganda since 2012. I am an alumnus of Makerere University (Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery), Uganda Martyrs University (Master of Science in ICT Management, Policy, and Architectural Design) and Strathmore Business School (Master of Business Administration, Healthcare Management). Before Rocket Health, I previously worked at UNICEF where I supported the deployment of digital health technologies in public healthcare.
What inspired you to start in Rocket Health/The Medical Concierge Group?
What inspired us to start Rocket Health were the challenges that we saw in the healthcare system. The experience for patients was quite fragmented. Many of the patients would have to queue for long hours to see a doctor or experience drug stock-outs. One would have to move from one lab or pharmacy to another looking for different services. The cost of care was constantly increasing, and we thought that technology could play a role in streamlining the experience for consumers, making healthcare more affordable and accessible, in addition to creating efficiencies along the healthcare value chain― the doctors, the hospitals, the suppliers, the insurers, and the government.
That’s why we started Rocket Health.
The life of startupping is tough. Most often fall off before their first or second birthday; what kept you going even when the going became tough?
What has really kept us going is the mission―that we intend to use innovative digital health solutions to create the best possible outcomes for everybody in the healthcare value chain. And the patient was a fantastic place to start. We are constantly patient-centric, trying to find solutions that are going to serve the patient and create efficiencies for the patient and even beyond that, create efficiencies for our doctors who are serving the patients.
We have served several development agencies like USAID, World Vision, John Hopkins etc, to extend digital health services to people in hard-to-reach areas. So, in terms of what has kept us going, I think it’s the mission. We are extremely passionate and have a strong conviction for this mission and we constantly keep pivoting and finding the best solutions over time.
What have been your key highlights in the last 10 years?
There are quite many, starting with getting the right co-founders to join this mission. Rocket Health wouldn’t be here if a group of people didn’t agree to come together and work together for the same mission. That’s probably my biggest milestone.
The other one would be our first big customers; the ones that enable you to keep the lights on, to keep things going forward because you can afford to keep paying for them. At some point, capital runs out if you don’t generate revenue and you can’t keep getting capital indefinitely if you haven’t historically had a track record of results.
The other milestones are, when we got our first angel investment, when we signed on our first insurance companies after a pilot and then, COVID-19, which has been our biggest turning point to date. The pandemic enabled us to bring in new entrants into the virtual care model that wouldn’t have ordinarily tried it out before. These new entrants tried it out and many have since never gone back.
And of course, now, the Series A funding which allows us to really expand beyond what we could have been able to do with the means that we had before.
I&M Select Banking Sapphire Club wins “Best Innovation of the Year” at UMEAS 2025What’s your vision for the business? What keeps you awake at night?
One of the things customers should expect is that the quality of our service is going to improve. It’s already high but we believe that there is still much more room for improvement in delivering clinical outcomes, reducing turnaround time, providing a broader range of offerings, whether it’s pharmacy products, lab tests or our range of clinic and specialist services.
The other big deal that customers can look forward to is our expansion geographically. We plan to have at least 10 physical locations in many towns across the country by the end of the next year. At each of those locations, people will be able to get lab sample pickups, pharmacy deliveries, teleconsultations, and in-patient clinic visits.
The other thing the customers can expect is a lot of new technology especially a mobile app that we shall be able to launch as a result of this investment.
Every business, especially startups, is as good as its leader- at least most of the time. What has been your role in the success of the business as well as in the attraction of the USD5 million funding?
There are many things, but at the end of the day, it comes to strategy, operations, fundraising and building a culture. And personally, my training in medicine, business and IT has made leading certain components of the business easier. It’s from a point of having laboured to study these things and apply them to the real-life context. So, it’s just that triple education background plus the real experience of running the business.
What are the key lessons you have learned throughout this journey? What message would you like to share with other start-ups?
Choose your co-founders well. Make sure that you have a deep conviction about the mission of the business. Africa’s best startups are going to be mission-focused or mission-centred startups. And learn as much as you can along the way. At every stage of the business, make sure that you get that product-market fit as quickly as you can by learning from your customers. Also, get to that startup-investor fit so that you can get the capital that you need to scale.
