It’s been a busy few months — and exciting ones. In this update, we’re introducing our newest ventures, sharing what drew us to them, and what we’re building together next.
Malaica: Making pregnancy safe and affordable for millions of women.
Our latest addition is Malaica: we had been keeping an eye on the health start-up from Kenya for some time because it’s a great, impactful business with a great team. Malaica is the result of a terrible experience: founder Lorraine Muluka, a gynaecologist, lost her cousin in the eighth month of pregnancy. She was living in rural Kenya without access to prenatal care; when complications developed, she couldn’t self-diagnose them correctly and did not receive medical help quickly enough when it was needed. Lorraine founded Malaica to never let this happen again. Malaica is a pregnancy programme that combines remote counselling and online groups with in-person check-ups. The need is huge – maternal mortality on the African continent is 100 times higher than in the Western world – and the product is working: Malaica has already provided free pregnancy counselling to almost 200,000 women and the paid business is growing by 20% per month. We are delighted that Malaica has accepted us as investors and look forward to working with them on their vision of ‘making pregnancy safe and affordable for millions of women’.
Our first pilot with S&Y Mobility is kicking off – Tuk Tuk conversion and the development of a new charging infrastructure.
Also new to our portfolio is S&Y Mobility in Ethiopia: founder Sami has built up a very successful business in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray province with multi-plugs made from eucalyptus wood and recycled copper. In collaboration with my co-founder Jochen Moninger, he has now developed a new business model: converting three-wheel taxis (the widely used tuk tuks) to electric drive and setting up a charging infrastructure in Tigray. This makes sense, as Sami is an electrical engineer by trade and is already working with a metalworker from the automotive industry. On top, Ethiopia is one of the first countries in the world to ban the import of combustion engines and already obtains 90% of its energy from renewable sources. Only the tuk tuks run on petrol 99% of the time and the drivers stand at the petrol station for hours a day when they run out of fuel again. During my last visit, I saw Sami’s promising prototype – now we are giving him a loan so that he can build eight tuk tuks, sell them and create and operate the energy supply. If the pilot works out, we will decide later this year whether to invest in his company.
Resilient innovation: A Journey from Biscuits to Soap Mixers
Meet Mearg Gebremedhn from war-torn Mekele in Tigray. Mearg is an economist and worked in telecoms, but he was an entrepreneur at heart. His wife was a baker with four employees. She showed him the world of biscuits, and he started scouting the world (and YouTube) for ideas to make her life easier. He taught himself to build machines (a dough mixer, a cutter, a sheeter) which he gave his wife. Her business took off and she went from 4 to 19 employees. And his business took off, too.
Then COVID came and bakeries no longer bought machines. He restarted again as he spotted a niche to refit his doughmakers into soap mixers for sanitizers. Then the war came, his factory burnt down, he lost everything and he restarted from scratch in his own backyard. And now his business is back up on its feet, growing and serving Tigray‘s bakers – and for every machine he produces (and creates jobs with) his customers create three more. That’s the power of light mechanization, which I believe is one of the keys to development anyway. And he is spearheading an entire sector of machine manufacturing, which doesn’t yet exist in Ethiopia. With our help, Mearg was able to acquire land for construction last year, which he now owns. He is using the first instalment of our investment to expand his factory and introduce other products – such as wind turbines that provide electricity for bakeries in rural areas.
Training the next wave of sales professionals and connecting them to the growing number of businesses that need them most.
And last but not least, Beza with her training company BeSingularity, which trains unemployed women in particular to become sales experts and places them with companies, creating a job with dignity and a step out of poverty every single time. We signed a deal with her and wired the money on the last day of last year, which she can now use to expand her activities to other parts of the country.
As you can see: a whirlwind of activities. And expect the pace to continue because I believe we have now ‘validated’ our model: we know which companies need us the most, and which ones are most likely to bring the kind of return we are looking for: jobs. Because a job is still the best way out of poverty. Once the model is in place, it’s easy to replicate – and that’s exactly what we’re looking to do this year, and we want to add another five ventures to our portfolio over the coming months.
