The Making More Health Business Accelerator Program provides a powerful platform to accelerate its participants’ growth, impact and sustainability by combining financial access, strategic networks, technical support and collaboration with one of the leading global organizations like Boehringer Ingelheim and Ashoka. This program’s aim is to unlock the potential for growth, impact and sustainability of promising start-ups in the health sector in a bid to advance access to healthcare in targeted countries across the African continent. The application deadline for this program is January 31, 2022 – Ashoka – Boehringer Ingelheim Making More Health Co-Creation Accelerator 2022 for Social Entrepreneurs (£50,000 in Funding)
The Making More Health (MMH) Business Accelerator is a structured business growth program that is currently in its fourth year and consists of two phases namely;
Pilot Phase: This is Phase 1 of the program that runs for a period of 12 months and it involves co-creation and pilot implementation of a high-impact strategic project or an initiative to drive growth, impact, and sustainability of participating businesses. £50,000 financial support comes along with this phase.
Scale-up Phase: This is known as Phase 2 and it takes the same amount of time as the pilot phase. It follows the successful implementation of Phase 1. An additional financial support worth £100,000 – £200,000 is given to businesses that survive the pilot phase and advance to the scale-up phase.
The key component of both pilot and scale-up phases is co-creation that involves hand-in-hand collaboration between the social entrepreneurs and the Boehringer Ingelheim employees who volunteer and give their time and expertise to this program.
Who is eligible?
- Business or social enterprise that have legal entity
- A business that has been in operation for three years
- A business from any sector that contributes either directly or indirectly to human or animal health
- The business should be operating in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda
- The business should have generated revenue of at least $100,000 in annual sales
- It must have evidence of social impact with clearly defined impact metrics
- The business or enterprise should have at least eight team members including founders and management team
- And lastly, it must fall under a start-up level of growth
The Requirements
It should be a proven social business that addresses barriers to healthcare for humans and animals that includes systematic challenges that affect availability, affordability, access and awareness in healthcare. The program is interested specifically in innovations that are aimed at non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and this includes diabetes, hypertension, myocardial infarction, stroke, respiratory disease and cancers in human health.
On the side of animal health, this program focuses on innovations that address issues of human-animal transmission in addition to common animal health access issues that are related to last-mile distribution, education and awareness, cold chain, extension services and many more.
The examples of solutions that have already applied for this program 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 and so many more.
You can submit your application in case your innovation contributes to the increase in healthcare access across Africa through addressing any of the challenges mentioned above.
The Program Benefits
Knowledge access: The participants receive many opportunities for their growth and development professionally in their risk-taking journey. This includes in-person and online workshops and seminars regarding topics about operations, systems change, replication and transfer, social finance and so many more.
Technical expertise: Participants get to interact with staffs who are experienced at the Boehringer Ingelheim. They volunteer their time to provide hands-on technical support in various professional disciplines. Engagement with this personnel may happen virtually or in-person through an Executive in Residence program. This program has an experienced executives who are within the social entrepreneurs’ organizations for 2 – 4 weeks to work on key specific parts of the projects. A number of consultants are also engaged in this program to offer custom expert support to participants in areas that include investor engagement, communications and pitching.
Strategic networks: Applicants who succeed will tap into the newly launched Making More Health access network that has the potential to leverage the expert engagement and support between the social entrepreneurs and the Boehringer Ingelheim staffs. In addition, they also form part of an ever-growing community of ecosystem actors that include impact investors, foundations, philanthropists, government agencies, corporate executives, social entrepreneurs as well as multinational healthcare companies that are committed to improving health care for people and animals in Africa.
Financial and investor access support: Every participant is provided with a grant worth £50,000 for the pilot implementation. This also includes the possibility of other additional funds for the second phase at the end of a successful pilot phase. To facilitate access to third-party investors, participants receive investment-readiness coaching and support before and after the program from experts. Participants are given a platform to showcase their innovations and engage with a growing community of impact investors at MMH’s annual investor showcase event and other external investors access these events. There are opportunities for the entrants to MMS to apply for extra funding through the just-launched Boehringer Ingelheim Social Engagement Fund.
Business collaboration: There is great potential for a strategic business collaboration to be created with the promise of important long-term benefits for both Boehringer Ingelheim and the accelerator participants.
For more information about Ashoka – Boehringer Ingelheim Making More Health Co-Creation Accelerator 2022 for Social Entrepreneurs Check Here and how to apply, please click here
