Meet the 7 startups selected for Nigeria’s Ventures Platform, Lasric’s Covid-19 challenge

Seven startups have been selected by Nigeria’s Ventures Platform and the Lagos State Science and Research and Innovation Council (Lasric) to take part in the #Covid19InnovationChallenge, to develop solutions to mitigate the spread of the virus in Nigeria.

Ventures Platform opened applications earlier this month for the challenge — to find, support, fund and grow products and services that could potentially help millions of Africans through the pandemic.

In a statement on Friday (27 March), Ventures Platform and Lasric said the seven were chosen from over 500 applicants that submitted applications over six days.

Seven startups will each receive a $2ke quity-free grant and mentorship through Venture Platform and Lasric’s #Covid19 InnovationChallenge

Those selected will each receive a $2000 equity-free grant and opportunity for further funding, as well as access to virtual workspace and mentorship from some of Africa’s top healthcare, business and technology leaders to help scale their company.

Currently pitching: COVIDTrace leverages Bluetooth technology to access and track contacts to speed up the contact-tracing process. pic.twitter.com/PRvaCWhQRZ

— Ventures Platform Hub (@vplatformhub) March 26, 2020

The seven will now be enrolled on a five-day bootcamp, intended to help the selected founders and startups work with selected stakeholders to finalise solutions and launch.

Each startup will have access to three mentors — medical expertise, scaling and launch, and technical expertise.

These mentors are from some of Africa’s top, healthcare, business, and technology leaders. They include: Yewande Sadiku, Celestine Omin, Iyin Aboyeji, Rebecca Enonchong, Alexis Roman, OO Nwoye, Seun Onigbinde, Titi Akinsanmi, Dr Ola Brown, Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor, Dr Ebi Ofrey and Dr Femi Kuti.

The startups will later present their solutions to the public. With the support of media partners such as IrokoTV and Facebook and PR consultants.

The final seven are:

Wellvis Health (Wale Adeosun): The startup offers solutions that promote primary care, by improving the health of the public through continuous access to personalised health information.

Prunedge (Joel Ogunsola): Prunedge is a technology company that develops innovative solutions to improve the efficiency of processes, the livelihood of people and aid decision making within organizations.

Infodemics (Nestor Inimgba): The startup uses existing social hierarchies in a community to efficiently and effectively communicate health risks.

Wellahealth (Ikpeme Neto): This startup has developed a digital triage bot that provides guidance based on Nigeria Centre for Disease Control guidelines and logs responses for follow up by public health as needed.

MyServiceAgent (Mayowa Ayodeji): MyServiceAgent is an artificial intelligence (AI) powered intelligent IVR system that can communicate with hundreds to thousands of callers simultaneously and intelligently and disseminate correct information from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control as well as pass on the data to the NCDC to act on swiftly.

Innover Technologies (Okorie Tochukwu): This startup is committed to using technology to solve problems. The company’s solution for the project is named Covid-19 Nigeria.

Cmapit Analytics (Abiri Oluwatosin Niyi): This startup offers geographic information System (GIS) and data visualization software that helps to analyse and visualise geospatial data concerning the virus.

Featured image: Ventures Platform Hub via Facebook