A business approach to healthcare delivery in Nigeria

We sit down with Mobolaji Ajayi, founder of Purelife Health, who shares how a deeply personal experience sparked her mission to make healthcare in Nigeria more dignified, accessible, and trustworthy. She created a solution that blends pharmacy, public health, and entrepreneurship by building a care delivery model that reaches mothers in Lagos and patients in peri-urban towns alike. Since then she has scaled across 18 states, and was recently named a Top 10 hero at the Africa’s Business Heroes annual competition. (Apply here for the 2025 Africa’s Business Heroes competition)

You bring together pharmacy, public health, and business in your work. How has this interdisciplinary background helped you identify and act on the gaps in Nigeria’s health system?

This journey is deeply personal to me. I watched my younger brother battle a heart condition in his early years, and I remember the pain of delayed diagnoses, the desperate search for medications, and the heartbreak on my parents’ faces. That experience became the compass for my life’s work. My background in pharmacy taught me the science, public health gave me context, and business gave me tools to drive change – not in theory, but in practice. Bringing all three together has allowed me to look at healthcare through multiple lenses: as a daughter, a clinician, a strategist, and now, a founder. It has given me the eyes to see the cracks in the system, but more importantly, the courage to build bridges across them. Every step I take is driven by a calling bigger than myself – to restore dignity in healthcare for everyday Africans.

At Purelife Health, you are building a tech-enabled care delivery model. What exactly does that look like in practice, from the perspective of a patient using your service?

To our patients, Purelife feels like someone finally thought of them first. Our tech-enabled care model means that a mother in Lagos doesn’t have to choose between a day’s wages and a health consultation. She can log on, consult with a pharmacist or doctor, receive diagnostics at home, and get medications delivered to her doorstep within hours – all without standing in a queue or fearing fake medications.

It’s not about apps or dashboards; it’s about building trust, speed, and convenience into every layer of care. We use blockchain for drug authentication, predictive tech for inventory, and human-centered design for the experience. The end result? A care system that doesn’t just treat symptoms but respects time, context, and humanity.

What made you believe that the challenges of access, affordability, and trust in healthcare could be solved through entrepreneurship, rather than policy or public health advocacy alone?

Because people are dying while waiting on policy. I say that with deep respect for advocacy and systems work, they matter but I needed a faster lane to impact. I believed that entrepreneurship could become a vehicle for execution, empathy, and excellence, all at once. Entrepreneurship gave me a way to act now to prototype, to iterate, to respond. And in doing so, to show what’s possible. I believe healthcare should never be reserved for the privileged or postponed by bureaucracy. Through Purelife, I’ve chosen to build solutions that move at the speed of life – urgent, present, and personal.

Your work has touched both urban and peri-urban populations. How do you adapt Purelife’s services to very different socioeconomic contexts without compromising on quality or efficiency?

The answer is patient-centrism. We listen deeply, intentionally, and constantly. In Lekki, the priority might be wellness kits and privacy. In Mowe, it’s proximity and affordability. But dignity is universal. We’ve built Purelife with adaptability in its DNA from flexible payment plans to teleconsultations in local dialects, to deploying mobile clinics in underserved areas. We don’t offer watered-down care in low-income areas. We offer context-aware care because excellence should never be a privilege. It should be the standard. That’s what our patients deserve, and it’s what we commit to every day.

One of Purelife Pharmacy’s outlets in Lagos.

Healthcare is notoriously difficult to fund at the early stage. What was your capital strategy early on and what lessons have you carried into the company’s growth phase?

We bootstrapped and it wasn’t romantic. It was hard. We sold, saved, reinvested. Every naira stretched, every decision scrutinised. But that season taught me discipline, resilience, and the sacred power of starting small.

Our early funding came from people who believed in the vision before the metrics and that faith kept us alive. The biggest lesson? Storytelling is capital. Conviction is currency. And nothing replaces integrity. Now, even as we scale, those values still guide every partnership, every pitch, every promise.

You made it to the Top 10 of Africa’s Business Heroes. What was your mindset when applying, and how did going through the competition challenge or sharpen your thinking?

I applied with trembling hands. Not because I didn’t believe in the work, but because I was afraid I wasn’t enough. But I reminded myself this story isn’t mine alone. It belongs to every mother who walks miles for medication. Every young pharmacist wants to build differently. Every patient who just wants to be heard. ABH didn’t just challenge my strategy it stretched my soul. It forced me to own my story, to pitch with conviction, to sharpen my focus. And it showed me that vulnerability is not weakness it’s the gateway to deep connection.

Was reaching the finalist stage something you expected? What does being recognised at that level mean for you, especially in a field like healthcare where visibility can directly impact partnerships?

No, I didn’t expect it and maybe that’s what made it so sacred. It felt like God was affirming a whisper I had followed for years. Being recognised at this level means the world, not for ego, but for opportunity. Visibility is credibility. It opens doors, fast-tracks partnerships, and places our mission in rooms we once dreamed of.

Healthcare needs voices that carry both empathy and execution and I am honored to carry mine, now louder and bolder, because of ABH.

You’ve also been involved in fighting counterfeit medicine through Transcend Pharma. How does that experience shape how you think about trust and reliability in Purelife’s service delivery?

Nigeria is one of the largest hubs for counterfeit medicines globally a silent epidemic claiming thousands of lives every year. People unknowingly consume fake medications for malaria, hypertension, or infections, only to realize too late that what they trusted was never real. This crisis shaped my worldview and made trust the cornerstone of everything we do. Fighting counterfeit medicine opened my eyes to the silent war being fought on our shelves where fake pills cost real lives. At Transcend, we realized that trust is not built by advertising; it’s built by traceability. It’s why Purelife verifies every drug we sell. Why we invest in blockchain. Why we over-communicate.

Because behind every package is a person. And their trust is not assumed it’s earned, with every order, every call, every outcome.

Do you see Purelife scaling beyond Nigeria in the near future? What are you looking for a partner or ecosystem to support that kind of expansion?

Absolutely. Purelife was never meant to end in Nigeria. The vision is African. But we are building not just to expand we’re building to endure. We’re looking for partners who understand that healthcare is sacred work. Who believe that impact and scale can coexist. We want ecosystems that value local insight, shared ownership, and bold innovation. We’re not looking for shortcuts – we’re building bridges. And we know the right partners will walk with us across them.

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