Deadline: February 28, 2025

Investing in Innovation (i3) is a pan-African commercialization support program that aims to help scale 5-7 African Healthtech startups that are working to advance healthcare access and delivery in Africa

Sponsored by the Gates Foundation, MSD, Cencora, Chemonics, Endless Foundation, HELP Logistics, and Sanofi, i3’s third cohort will provide 5-7 startups with up to $225K in risk-tolerant funding and connect them to leading healthcare organizations (donors, industry, global health institutions, and governments) to scale their impact and produce measurable advances in access.

Benefits

• Access to Markets: i3 connects healthtech start-ups with large healthcare organizations including governments, donors, and global health institutions to drive adoption of start-ups’ offerings and scale.
• Risk-Tolerant Finance: i3’s third cohort will provide grant funding of up to $225K for growth-stage innovators, to overcome barriers to partnerships with large healthcare organizations e.g. WHO pre-qualification and regulatory compliance.
• Partnership Readiness Support: i3 provides a roadmap to help innovators meet the requirements for partnering with major healthcare organizations.
• Bespoke Deal Facilitation: i3 helps innovators refine their strategic positioning and increase the likelihood of successful partnerships and deals with large healthcare organizations.
• Communications and Advocacy: i3 provides highly professionalized communications and advocacy, to amplify the work of African healthtech innovators in the global health landscape. Additionally, i3 works towards resolving key ecosystem barriers that impact healthtech innovation in Africa.

Eligibility

Focus on African ownership

• Must have a strategic focus on meeting the needs of African customers in Africa.
• Must be headquartered or have a legal presence in Africa.

Focus on tech-enabled and data-driven healthcare delivery and/or product distribution

• Must offer advanced technology-enabled solutions designed to improve pharmacy services. Innovators that develop novel health products or devices as a part of their delivery or distribution services are eligible. Excluded are innovators who are solely focused on research, education, and product or device development. The business does not need to be solely focused on health to be eligible.
• Non-profits, consultancies, intermediaries and consortiums are not eligible.

Growth stage

• Growth-stage tech-enabled businesses owned or operated by African Nationals, and with a legal presence on the continent
  Start-ups offering advanced technology-enabled solutions designed to improve pharmacy services in Africa.
• To be considered “Growth stage” i3 seeks innovators that have
  • Products/services at/near national scale in at least one country
  • Strong, well-defined revenue model, sales and operational capabilities
  • Proven customer and revenue diversification with aggregate annual revenues over $500K USD
  • Clear plan for businesses growth and sustainability
  • Decreasing customer acquisition costs
  • Clear plan for growth of healthcare offering
  • Clear need and plan for partnerships with industry, donors and global health agencies that correspond to i3’s offerings

Social impact

• The business does not need to be solely focused on health.
• Must demonstrate that grant funding will generate direct improvements in one or more of the following areas: availability, accessibility, quality, affordability or visibility of critical health products and services in the pharmacy sector.

For more information, visit

To apply, click here