Investments for Impact

Investments for Impact is a Villgro Africa podcast. Season 3 is brought to you by Villgro Africa and Jaza Rift Ventures.

As a way of wrapping up our previous discussions, this episode takes a broader look at what investors are looking for. We were lucky to have one of our own, Steve Njenga, Investment and Transaction Lead at Villgro Africa, as well as Loise Warui, Investment Lead at Adanian Labs to discuss the investor perspective!

Over the past few years, Villgro Africa has made a conscious choice to prioritize creating gender balance within the team. Host and Villgro Africa COO Franciscah Nzanga welcomes Co-Founder and CEO Wilfred Njagi and CTO Wambui Nyabero Gachiengo as panelists to discuss why Villgro has pursued a more gender balanced team, why this issue is important in the innovation space more generally, the importance of mentorship, and the necessity of self-reflection when it comes to our own biases.

Thank you for listening to Villgro Africa. Today, we hosted Wambui Gachiengo, an innovation leader in the medical device industry with experience in both North America and East Africa and Dr. Robert Karanja, a renowned medical researcher with over 15 years of experience and the Chief Innovations Officer & Co-founder of Villgro Africa. The show was hosted by Wilfred Njagi, CEO & Co-founder Villgro Africa and Dr. Arun Venkatesan, CEO & Co-founder Villgro USA. This podcast is produced by Villgro Africa.

What are some of the steps you need to go through from prototyping a medical device innovation to commercialization?

Wambui: 

- Always start with the user and keep the end user front and central in the entire process. 

- Observe and have lots of conversations with people who would be using the device. Once you understand that space then you need to do a lot of homework on the clinical and technology space as well as understanding competitive devices. 

- Once you do the development you have to go through the regulatory process and you have to do a lot of testing. That includes user feedback so that you iterate until you get to a device that the market wants and that can be approved from a regulatory stand point and that can also be commercially successful.

Can these steps can be packaged in a replicable & transferrable manner compared to what you have seen in the West and what you have seen in East Africa? 

Wambui: Absolutely. I know there are people who say things like invention and innovation are things that cannot be taught but I believe that if you have these tools and you understand them well you can implement them in any environment. If you have teams of people who really understand their subject matter expertise you can use these tools and teach them and guide people to keep the end users in mind and continue the innovation process. It may be the case that we may have to tweak some of the process and structures a bit to fit the environment we may need to work on building enabling environment like having access to rapid prototyping and the end ISO Certified manufacturing facilities but I believe we are already moving and will be able to adjust as we move forward.

What are the areas where Villgro Africa adds most value?

Robert

- The value we add is funding it is usually very small funding but it helps innovators to get a stamps of approval, some recognition and validation to potential funders or investors that typically would want to sit on the fence until they see that the venture is more of a sure thing.

- Being able to provide a learning by doing type of mechanism that allows an innovator or young startup to actually go through those five steps unlike learning in theory, working with the benefit of the experience within the Villgro Africa team. This helps de-risk the commercialization process in a very significant way.

- We are also an honest broker. Regulators may not want to have a direct line of communication to the people they are regulating but it is possible for them to have discussions with enablers like us. That way we are able to have the feedback loop between the regulators and those who are being regulated. This is important especially for us in the ecosystem because our regulators are also learning how to regulate home grown innovations.

Part I - Investment Readiness

Over the past few months, there has been increased discussion around the funding gap between expat and locally founded companies. To explore this further, this is the first episode of a three-part series on fundraising with a specific focus on demystifying this gap.

Key Takeaways:

Med-tech innovations are picking up the pace in East Africa in a bid to provide homegrown solutions to healthcare challenges. Being a nascent field there are fewer mentors who have gone before them within the ecosystem to help them scale their innovations. There is a need for more mentors to help guide these innovators to not only develop impactful innovations but also thrive as enterprises.

Mentorship helps innovators (Mentee):

• Gain access to funding – mentors help innovators in fundraising and putting together compelling proposals for their projects so that they are able to compete on a global front.

• Fill the skillset gap – Enterprises gain access to mentors who have years of expertise that complement their team and help them move forward fast with fewer mistakes.

• Access to networks – Mentors can help unlock partnerships with key people who can benefit the enterprise.

Mentees need to 

• Really understand their device, process, service of what they are developing, do extensive research on the market to see if it is scalable. 

• Think through the business aspect during the product development stage. Don’t look at them too late when so much has been done.

• Evaluate whether they should focus on the R&D later on in their journey or whether they can outsource it so that they can focus on marketing and distribution. 

• Mentees also need to reach out to mentors, make the most out of it, and utilize the expertise available to them. Seek out other mentors and do your best to seek the specific guidance you need.