Global healthcare and pharmaceutical firm Merck has chosen one Ghanaian startup and two from the United States (US) to take part in the third edition of its e-health accelerator in Nairobi, Kenya.
Disrupt Africa reported in January of last year Merck had launched its e-health accelerator programme in Nairobi, – the programme already successfully established in Germany – aiming to foster the growth of Africa’s high potential, early-stage e-health startups.
The three-month Merck Accelerator Africa programme sees chosen startups in the field of digital health given funding with no equity taken in return -, and provided with coaching, mentoring, access to Merck’s global networks.
While in the first two rounds of the programme Merck offered startups US$15,000 in funding, this time the amount has been increased, so participants in the third cohort will receive up to US$30,000.
Ghanaian startup Peach Health Technologies is among those chosen to take part this time. The company is the developer of a cloud-based electronic medical records systems for hospitals in developing countries.
Also selected were US companies RxAll, a developer of an AI platform designed to let pharmacies authenticate medicines in Africa, and Secure Data Kit, a programme for data management of global health supply chains.
“We were impressed by the high number of good-quality applications we received for the fourth round of our programme in Darmstadt and the third round in Nairobi, and are happy to see the worldwide proliferation of promising startups in our three main fields healthcare, life science and performance materials. The increasing demand for capital support for startups in the health sector is also reflected in our accelerator applications,” said Michael Gamber, head of the Merck Innovation Centre in Darmstadt.
Those selected will have access to workspace at the Nairobi Metta, mentoring and coaching from a pool of over 50,000 experts from 66 countries, and financial support.
