Having completed a $600,000 round of funding last year, Windsor, NS-based supplement-maker TheraPBios PHARMA is now launching a drive to raise a further $400,000 to finance its drive into the Ontario market.

The fundraising exercises are part of the company’s $2 million plan to place its Bioteem40 supplements in stores across Canada and eventually, the U.S. The product has been approved by Health Canada, and the company is working toward Food and Drug Administration approval south of the border.

Bioteem40 tablets combine probiotics and nutritional supplements in a single pill, so consumers don’t have to keep many bottles of supplements to receive the nutritional benefits they need. Bioteem40 supplements contain prebiotic and probiotics to improve consumers’ ability to absorb the other beneficial substances by improving a person’s digestive health, the company said.

The product is now on sale throughout Atlantic Canada, and the five-member TheraPBios PHARMA team (which will soon grow by two people) is having a hard time meeting demand.

“We can’t produce enough of this powder,” said CEO Abdullah Kirumira in an interview. “We sell out every week, and $400,000 would allow us to enter Ontario. We’ve already lined up 300 outlets in Ontario interested in carrying the product. And if we launch in Ontario, then we will continue to grow the revenue of the company, which would help to finance further expansion.”

Kirumira and COO Glyn Davies began working on the technology behind the Bioteem40 product line in 2019, launching the company in 2021. Kirumira is a serial life sciences entrepreneur who previously founded diagnostic test-maker MedMira and Windsor, NS-based BioMedica Diagnostics, where Davies was a senior research scientist.

When the company began marketing its Bioteem40 supplements, it aimed to raise a total of $2 million of equity financing in three tranches to fund expansion. It budgeted for a $500,000 raise in 2024 to cover the costs of selling the product in Atlantic Canada. That tranche was oversubscribed, and TheraPBios ended up raising $600,000, all of it from investors in the Annapolis Valley.

Kirumira said he will campaign for investors in Halifax for the coming tranche, which he hopes to close in March or April.

“Last time, it only took us one month [to raise $600,000],” he said. “And the feedback I’m getting this time is, ‘Yes, you have a very good story.’”

He hopes the third tranche, worth $1 million, will close by the end of the year. He expects venture capital investors to be involved in that round.

A native of Uganda, Kirumira describes TheraPBios PHARMA as “a two-dimensional company” that produces a healthy product for consumers in rich countries like Canada and the U.S. but also hopes to help people in the developing world.

“With every product I sell in the developed world, I try to figure out a way to provide a similar product for the people of Africa, where I come from,” he said. “One of the ultimate goals we have is to link our technology and see if we can develop an affordable form of Bioteem to help young mothers and young children in the developing world, so they receive better nutrition and have better brain development.”