Visionnaire Ventures-led investment consortium has invested $25m in a robotics company Zipline to deliver blood and life saving medical supplies in Rwanda.

Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz have also participated in a series B round of funding.

Last month, Rwandan President Paul Kagame launched the world’s first national drone delivery service.

The Rwandan government aims to use drones to make up to 150 on-demand, emergency deliveries per day of life-saving blood to 21 transfusing facilities located in the western half of the country.

Founded out of San Francisco in 2011, Zipline is a robotics company that builds autonomous drones designed to deliver vaccines, medicine, or blood on request.

In Rwanda, Zipline maintains a fleet of 15 drones, called Zips, at its distribution center located in the country’s Muhanga region.

Each Zip can fly up to 150 km round trip and carry 1.5kg of blood, which is enough to save a person's life. 

Rwanda plans to expand Zipline’s drone delivery service to the Eastern half of the country in early 2017, putting almost every one of the country’s 11 million citizens within reach of instant delivery of lifesaving medicines.

“The inability to deliver life saving medicines to the people who need them the most causes millions of preventable deaths each year around the world. Zipline will help solve that problem once and for all,” said Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo. 

“We’ve built an instant delivery system for the world, allowing medicine to be delivered on-demand and at low-cost, anywhere,” he said.

Over the course of the next year Zipline plans to expand drone delivery services to countries across Africa. 

While Rwanda’s drone delivery service will initially focus on blood, an international partnership between UPS, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and Zipline will help the country quickly expand the types of medicines and lifesaving vaccines that can be delivered.

“Drones have the potential to revolutionise the way we reach remote communities with emergency medical supplies. The hours saved delivering blood products or a vaccine for someone who has been exposed to rabies with this technology could make the difference between life and death,” said Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

“This project will also act as an important test for whether drones are a viable way to improve targeted vaccine delivery around the world. Every child deserves basic, lifesaving vaccines. This technology could be an important step towards ensuring they get them.”