The Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke - A USAID Development Lab
Connect with us!
  • About SEAD
    • What is SEAD?
    • Our Approach
    • Our Partners
  • The SEAD Innovators
  • SEAD and Students
  • SEAD Knowledge Center
  • SEAD Blog

Three African startups tackling global health

3/14/2016

1 Comment

 
This post was written by Luni Libes of Fledge and originally appeared on The Next Step.
Picture
Continuing my visit to impactful African startups, yesterday my fellow Investors Circle [and SEAD partner] members met with three (very different) startups tackling global health.
​
First was MicroEnsure, an established, multi-country startup that is working in a very difficult space, selling insurance to the bottom of the pyramid.  The key learnings from the meeting were the successful channels for reaching that market, including partnering with mobile operators, the challenges of working and scaling across multiple countries, and most importantly, proof that it is possible to successfully and profitably sell products to that populace, even when the revenues are just $0.30/mo/customer.

Next stop was access.mobile, a SaaS company selling back-end logistics software to African hospitals and clinics.  Based in Kampala, Uganda, their Nairobi office was nestled in a gorgeous co-working space which felt just like an African Impact Hub.

Picture
The key learnings at this stop was that SaaS is the universal language of tech, whether tech-for-tech-sake or tech-for-good.  The Lean Startup philosophy, the pricing model, and the general organization of the team were all straight from the playbook from Salesforce.com in Silicon Valley.
After a great Ethiopian lunch, the last stop was at Totohealth, a startup tackling maternal and child death.  They do this with two ideas seen elsewhere in the world: First, week-by-week messages for pregnant and post-natal mothers, similar to BabyCenter, but attuned to the issues of African mothers, including being multilingual and available via voice for illiterate customers.  Second, with the Totobox, a kit of products for post-natal care of babies, based on the highly successful baby box in Finland.
Picture
Both of these as paid services.  Both sold primarily through NGO and government programs, but with some direct-to-consumer sales as well.
Perhaps our philanthropic urges have finally been numbed, but in this day of visits, the conversations amongst the investors was focused on viability of the businesses, the potential structures for investments, and the likely outcomes/exits.
1 Comment
cv writer link
4/16/2020 06:12:24 am

It seems like your visit in Africa was an eye-opener experience for you. Aside from their culture and tradition, you have seen the things that must be changed and the kind of help the community needs right now. African people have been suffering from various problems right now and the battle for these are still far from over. that's why if there is anything that we can help, we should always be wiling to do that.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    SEAD

    A USAID development lab for scaling innovations in global health.

    Providing social entrepreneurs in global health with the knowledge, systems and networks needed to succeed.

    Archives

    November 2017
    June 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    November 2012

    Categories

    All
    DHT Lab
    DHT-Lab
    Our Partners
    Publication
    Sead And Students
    SEAD Innovators
    Sead In The News
    SEAD In The News
    Sead Students
    SEAD Summit

    RSS Feed

Contact Us
Mailing Address: 100 Fuqua Drive, Box 90120, Durham, NC 27708-0120

Campus Location: SEAD/CASE Suite, W136, Keller West, Fuqua School of Business
@DukeSEAD
info@dukesead.org
The Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD)
A USAID Development Lab for Scaling Innovations in Global Health