ashoka-making-more-health-accelerator

Application Deadline: January 31, 2022

The Making More Health Business Accelerator Program aims to unlock the potential for growth, impact, and sustainability of promising startups in the health sector in a bid to advance access to healthcare in targeted countries across Africa. By combining financial access, strategic networks, technical support, and collaboration with leading global organizations like Boehringer Ingelheim and Ashoka, the program provides its participants with a powerful platform to accelerate their growth, impact and sustainability.

The Making More Health (MMH) Business Accelerator, currently in its fourth year, is a structured business growth program that consists of 2 phases.

Phase 1 – called the “Pilot Phase” runs for 12 months and involves co-creation and pilot implementation of a high-impact strategic project or initiative to drive growth, impact, and sustainability of participating businesses. The Pilot Phase comes with financial support of Euro 50,000.

Phase 2 – called the “Scale-up Phase” also runs for 12 months and follows the successful implementation of the pilot phase. Businesses that advance to the scale-up phase receive additional financial support of between Euro 100K-200K. Co-creation involving hand-in-hand collaboration between the social entrepreneurs and Boehringer Ingelheim employees who volunteer to contribute their time and expertise to the pilot and scale-up projects is a key component of both phases of the program.

Eligibility Requirements

1. Legal Entity: Business or Social Enterprise
2. Age: At least three years of operation
3. Sector: Any sector that contributes directly or indirectly to human or animal health
4. Country of operation: Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda.
5. Revenue: At least USD 100K in annual sales revenue.
6. Impact: Evidence of social impact with clearly defined impact metrics
7. Team: At least eight team members including founders and management team
8. Growth stage: Startups

Requirements

Proven social businesses that are addressing barriers to healthcare for humans and animals including systemic challenges affecting availability, affordability, access, and awareness in healthcare. In human health, the program is particularly interested in innovations aimed at non-communicable diseases (NCDs)  including diabetes, hypertension, myocardial infarction, stroke, respiratory disease, and cancers

On the animal health front, the program is interested in innovations addressing issues of human-animal transmission in addition to common animal health access issues related to last-mile distribution, education, and awareness, cold chain, extension services etc.

Examples of solutions that have applied for the program in the past include digital health solutions, micro-health insurance, last-mile animal vaccine delivery models, emergency transportation services, health data analytics, disease management solutions, and supply chain innovations among many others. 

If your innovation contributes to the increase in healthcare access in Africa by addressing any of the challenges highlighted above, we are interested in receiving your application.

Benefits

1. Knowledge Access:

The program offers participants multiple opportunities for professional growth and development in their entrepreneurial journey. Includes in-person and online workshops and seminars on topics about operations, systems change, replication & transfer, social finance, among others.

2. Technical expertise:

Participants have access to experienced employees at Boehringer Ingelheim who volunteer their time to provide hands-on technical support across a variety of professional disciplines. Engagement with BI employees may take place virtually or in person through an Executive in Residence program that has experienced executives placed within the social entrepreneurs’ organizations for between 2-4 weeks to work on specific aspects of the projects. Additionally, the program engages a number of consultants to offer tailored expert support to participants in areas such as investor engagement, communications, and pitching.

3. Strategic networks:

Accelerator participants become part of an ever-growing and closely-knit community of ecosystem actors including impact investors, foundations, philanthropists, government agencies, corporate executives, social entrepreneurs, experts, and multinational healthcare companies all committed to improving health care access for humans and animals across Africa. Successful applicants will also be able to tap into the newly launched Making More Health access network that will potentially leverage the expert engagement and support between the social entrepreneurs and the Boehringer Ingelheim employees.

4. Financial and Investor access support

The program provides each participant with a grant of Euros 50k for pilot implementation, with the possibility of additional scale-up funds at the end of a successful pilot. Participants also receive expert-led investment readiness coaching and support before and after the program to facilitate access to third-party investors. In addition, the program gives program participants a platform to showcase their innovations and engage a growing community of impact investors at MMH’s annual investor showcase event as well as other external investor access events. Additionally, entrants into the business accelerator community will have opportunities to apply for extra funding via the just-launched Boehringer Ingelheim Social Engagement Fund.

5. Business Collaboration

Where there is a timely and strategic fit between Boehringer Ingelheim and an accelerator participant, there is the potential for a strategic business collaboration to be formed with the promise of significant long-term benefits for both organizations.

For More Information:

Visit the Official Webpage of the Ashoka/Boehringer Ingelheim Making More Health Co-creation Accelerator 2022