Venture Spotlight: Shamba Data

The Health Entrepreneurship (HENT) Challenge’s first cohort is visiting Toronto this summer, where they are continuing their implementation phase through activities targeting business development, expanding entrepreneurial networks and facilitating exposure to potential investors. 

The HENT Communications team caught up with the ventures to learn more about the origins of their companies, what they’ve learned to date, and what is coming up next... 

Shamba Data - ZAMBIA

During his participation in an African Artificial Intelligence (AI) Hackathon, Kondwani Ngulube was motivated to tackle the challenges that afflict the agricultural industry. To substantiate his findings, he conducted interviews with over 100 agricultural stakeholders and farmers. Notably, he discovered that obtaining clean and accurate data on the agriculture supply chain, such as market intelligence, crop inputs like feed and modern production techniques, was a significant issue across the industry.

As a result, Kondwani joined forces with Brighton Mboya to develop a prototype that would address this challenge. After winning the African AI Hackathon, they co-founded Shamba Data, a venture that employs AI to connect African farmers to the agriculture supply chain. At present, Shamba Data serves as an agricultural data hub for Zambian farmers, providing them with real-time market intelligence for the Zambian industry. 

What is the accomplishment to date that your team is most proud of?   

Shamba Data has already onboarded over 350 farmers onto its platform, and the venture is scheduled to launch by mid-July 2023. The company is on track to generate nearly $2000 in revenue during its first month of operation. 

If you could give advice to another founder getting started, what would that be?   

“First, find a great co-founder. Next, talk to users early to spot their problems. Then build an MVP fast to solve those problems. Keep iterating on your prototype using user feedback. Finally, figure out if they are willing to pay for it. In the beginning, I think this is what matters most.” 

Looking forward, Shamba Data plans to acquire more than 2000 farmers to their platform by the end of 2023. They are also building an online platform that will connect farmers to buyers and agricultural input suppliers with ease.  

You can learn more about Shamba Data by visiting their website and their social media: LinkedIn & Facebook. 

Venture Spotlight: GICMED

The Health Entrepreneurship (HENT) Challenge’s first cohort is visiting Toronto this summer, where they are continuing their implementation phase through activities targeting business development, expanding entrepreneurial networks and facilitating exposure to potential investors. 

The HENT Communications team caught up with the ventures to learn more about the origins of their companies, what they’ve learned to date, and what is coming up next... 

GICMED (GIC Space) - CAMEROON

Conrad Tankou was working as a medical doctor in a rural community when he first witnessed the health challenges faced by rural residents. These areas were known to suffer the highest disease burden of breast and cervical cancers, with one of the biggest challenges being the ability to access specialized healthcare services for those diagnoses. Tankou noted that some of the reasons behind this issue included scarcity of qualified medical specialists, absence of adapted medical equipment, and low levels of health literacy among the population-at-risk with regards to these cancers. 

To combat these issues, Tankou started GICMED, a series of innovative MedTech solutions. Among these solutions, the team has developed a digital pathology system combined with pathology sample collection devices to deliver a patient-clinic interactive telemedicine platform that is enhancing diagnosis and engaging patients. Alongside his team, Tankou’s solutions provide rapid and inexpensive point of care diagnoses for all women, no matter their location or social status.  

What is the accomplishment to date that your team is most proud of?   

Since its launch, GICMED has successfully developed, piloted and clinically validated their solutions to serve as a solid foundation to scale-up and positively impact millions of women in Sub-Saharan Africa. Their team has carried out 23 pilots to date in collaboration with various health facilities and have reached over 10,000 women. 

If you could give advice to another founder getting started, what would that be?   

“Everyone can think of a great idea, but few are courageous enough to execute. You should be passionate about what you want to build, start small and early, fail fast (everyone fails, it is normal), learn quickly from your failures, refine your concept, then move faster.” 

Looking forward, GICMED plans on reaching 100,000 women in 2024 and scaling to other African countries within the next 3-5 years to eventually hit a milestone of 1 million women helped. While these efforts start with strongly establishing their current market, they look forward to progressively building partnerships which will enable them to scale broadly into new areas. 

You can learn more about GICMED by visiting their website.