Villgro Kenya incubatee clinicPesa has been selected alongside 5 other startups for the MIT D-Lab’s Scale Ups Fellowship. These six social enterprises were selected among 150+ that were nominated by you and represent a diverse range of sectors, including healthcare, agriculture, construction, and more.
clinicPesa provides access to healthcare financing through digital microloans and savings to uninsured low-income individuals in Uganda. clinicPesa enables its users to transfer small amounts of money to their accounts whenever possible, through their mobile phones or clinicPesa’s homepage. This allows customers to build a small pot of savings that can be used to access basic healthcare, offset medical bills, and buy drugs at any clinicPesa-registered clinic, hospital or pharmacy.
Women’s History Month provides a good opportunity to reflect on Villgro Kenya’s accomplishments supporting women entrepreneurs and the areas we still have work to do. Taking this opportunity can help us celebrate the success of these amazing entrepreneurs we have the opportunity to work with and, more importantly, examine how we can do even better in the future. Given the huge gender disparity in venture funding I think it’s important to be mindful of how far we have to go. Currently 40% of Villgro Kenya’s portfolio has at least one woman co-founder or senior decision maker. By the measure of the industry average of 2% of venture capital going to women led businesses, we’re on the right path, and I’m extremely proud of the impactful and exciting work that these companies are doing and what they will continue to accomplish. Just in the past week, Flare, led by two women co-founders, has been listed as on of the “Most Innovative Companies” by Fast Company and Mama Ope’s Olivia Koburongo published a blog on the Pneumonia Innovations Network. Given the number of pitches we get in the maternal health space from all-male teams, I think that 40% is all the more impressive, but I don’t think we can be complacent, and we should document what led to us to this accomplishment, so we assimilate that in our DNA to be able to replicate it in the future.
We need to be a stronger voice in the ecosystem for the proven fact that businesses with women in senior decision making roles perform better. IFC (International Finance Corporation) research shows that companies with gender balanced leadership teams growth in valuation is 25% greater than their non-gender balanced peers. I think this is a particular necessity for businesses that seek to serve a primarily female audience, such as companies in the maternal health space that are a key investment area for Villgro Kenya, and needs to be a serious consideration (risk) as we make funding decisions. Looking further inward, our success in funding women led companies comes almost in-spite of ourselves since we don’t have a woman on our investment team or our investment committee. In order to practice what we preach, we need to look for ways to correct this balance as we grow our team, which will help us make better decisions and support the companies in our portfolio better. The same IFC report shows the outcome of those better investment decisions, that funds with gender balanced investment teams deliver a 20% higher IRR (Internal Rate of Return).
Women led companies like Maisha Meds, who are improving pharmacy supply chain and access, are creating impactful and scalable change in East Africa, and Villgro Kenya is thrilled that we have been able to be part of their success. Though we’re off to a good start, we need to think about how we can be more intentional in supporting women entrepreneurs and that starts by practicing what we preach in two key areas:
1. Examining our recruiting process to ensure that there is no bias in selection to improve our gender balance at both the execution and board level;
2. Just like we tell our entrepreneurs, listening to our customers is important, in this case that means listening to our women customers (entrepreneurs) and understanding what we’re doing well and what we can do better to support them.
If we do these things I’m confident that Villgro Kenya can do an even better job of supporting the exceptional women entrepreneurs creating impact in East Africa.
By Paul Belknap
[vc_row nav_skin=”light” consent_include=”include”][vc_column css_animation=””][vc_image_caption aspect_ratio=”4:3″ overlay_mobile=”yes” style=”style_1″ caption_appear=”caption_appear” skin=”light” radius=”0″ title=”CLINIC PESA AND MAMA OPE JOIN VILLGRO KENYA’S PORTFOLIO” description=”” preloader=”” css_animation=””][vc_column_text]The workshop on Bringing MedTech Devices to scale in Uganda brought together various stakeholders in a bid to explore how innovation ecosystem development can facilitate the rapid scaling of health related devices in Uganda.
Dr. Karanja gave insights on the milestones Villgro Kenya has achieved with regards to supporting early stage innovations in East Africa. Speaking on the quality of pipeline on the Villgro Kenya portfolio he explained the process of due diligence that companies go through before being on-boarded onto the incubation program.
“Entrepreneurship is all about meeting demand. Villgro Kenya talks to all the stakeholders in our portfolio companies to ensure they position themselves for maximum impact and sustainability.”
He also added that one the companies come onto the program, they are taken through customized model validations for maximum impact.
“We take all our companies through model validations to come up with the most suitable business model for each. We believe one size does not fit all.” Explained Dr. Karanja.
On how to attract accelerator programs, he mentioned that some of the key incentives for bringing an accelerator into the space include local investor participation; local money brings in local expertise. Events and meet-ups like competitions and hack-a-thons also help increase the quality of companies/innovations, making it more attractive to accelerators.
Speakers for the event also included Co-creation – Sourcing Design Projects, Soumyadipta Acharya MD, MSE, Ph.D. Graduate Program Director, Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design (CBID) who spoke on Expanding academic partnerships.
Dr. Data Santorino, Uganda Country Manager Consortium for affordable medical technology (CAMTech;) Uganda’s first Tech Transfer office provided advice on IP development with regards to medical technologies.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
ConnectMed, the winners of the Villgro Kenya $10, 000 award for the best health category at the Nairobi Innovation Week have embarked on an activation activity to sensitize more people and create awareness on diabetes and hypertension.
With the partnership of the Nairobi County Government they have set up four screening booths strategically within the Nairobi Central Business District for two months. Two are at the Kenya National Archives while the others are set up in different parts of town daily.
At the booths they screen for hypertension and diabetes at no cost. Once you walk in you get your BMI checked, followed by your pressure and finally you are tested for blood sugar using a glucometer. The medical practitioners on site encourage patients found with either or both conditions to register on the ConnectMed(MDaktari) platform to help with monitoring of the condition and easy and affordable consultations.
“It is easier to be registered because the consultation fee is very affordable and once you are on the platform, we monitor your health daily. Patients are required to send daily readings of their pressure for those with hypertension. We give the glucometer to those with diabetes. Management of these conditions is key and as opposed to monthly check-up daily monitoring helps the patient live a more healthy lifestyle”, Kevin a Health Coach with ConnectMed said when we visited their booth.
Those who are not found to have hypertension or diabetes are congratulated and encouraged to continue living a healthy lifestyle.
“We encourage those who are not found with either conditions to live healthy lifestyles, and tell them to inform friends or family members who have hypertension or diabetes to get registered on the ConnectMed platform. We also give out brochures to help spread the word.” says Wycliffe Odhiambo Oogo, a Health Coach.
Going by the number of people who walk in to be screened at their booths, there is a growing number of Kenyans who are more conscious about their health. Younger people are however more hesitant to test for hypertension or diabetes.
“Some young people would rather not know, while others just fear needles but we encourage them to come get screened so that just in case they have either it is easily managed.” Kevin noted.
ConnectMed’s consultations are not limited to hypertension and diabetes but it also covers a wide range of ailments (cold & flu, eye, skin, UTI’s, Diarrhea & Vomiting and minor injuries). Through the affordable online platform, patients can get in touch with a doctor anytime, anywhere.
Pregmum is a device that monitors maternal and fetal health during pregnancy. It also provides a platform for storage of information and relays it to the appropriate medical and health care agencies for specific help.
Scarce medical facilities in remote areas and the inadequate number of nurses and doctors in primary health facilities are major contributors to maternal and neonatal deaths due to late response or detection of complications in pregnancies.
Timothy Kimemia, a system engineer saw the need for a platform that helps pregnant mums monitor the progress of their pregnancy after he saw how his sister went through a difficult pregnancy and witnessing a pregnant lady in distress headed to the hospital in a matatu (public transport vehicle).
Timothy applied for the #Okoamama Hack4Life Hack-a-thon organized by Villgro Kenya in 2016 where he met Bonface Sato a mechanical engineer, John Kiragu a Nursing Officer and Linus Wambugu a trained Public Health practitioner who doubled up as the team’s Business expert. Their innovation won $1, 000 to develop their prototype and incubation support from Villgro Kenya and Gearbox.
After developing their 1st prototype in March 2017 they were advised to make changes in terms of size and functionality to monitor the fetal heart rate and Blood Pressure.
Villgro connected them to Dr. Kenneth Chelule the Deputy CEO of Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute who helped work on capturing the fetal heart rate.
They have since developed the 2nd prototype which went through its first clinical test at the University of Nairobi School of Nursing.
Team dynamics was a major challenge at first given that neither of them were officially employed but they managed to come up with a management system that outlined their individual roles in the company.
They are the sole developers of the platform so that meant a lot of trial and error which translated to high costs before they got it right. During this period they operated remotely, held their meetings at Homeland twice a week and put together the device at Gearbox where they were given the space for free.
Timothy recognized the personalized and continued support Villgro Kenya has provided since they started out.
“Villgro has taken us as family. What is unique about the incubation we have received is that they have practically held our hand through our ups and downs. While other incubators drop start-ups when they do not meet targets, Villgro goes the extra mile. The belief in the potential impact our product has is also encouraging”
Currently they are focused on finetuning the product to fit the standards of ISO certification and the Kenya Bureau of Standards. To help with that they are fishing for key opinion leaders and advisors.
We believe this device can significantly reduce maternal and fetal mortality rates for those at the bottom of the social pyramid.