The Finding Impact Podcast

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FIP 89: High Tech Bio Tech for Development with Eddy Agbo of Fyodor Biotech Oct 17, 2018

Show notes

For the second episode in our high tech for development episode, I’m speaking to Eddy Agbo of Fyodor Biotech. We speak about early diagnostic methods that are changing the game for global health and the opportunities these represent for social enterprise. Eddy is the CEO of Fyodor Biotech, he's a PHD from Utrecht University in the Netherlands in molecular genetics and has a post-doctoral fellowship in medicine and infectious diseases at John Hopkins. Fyodor Biotech is building a portfolio of non-invasive fever diagnostic products for emerging markets, of which one, they're now commercialising, is the Urine Malaria Test (UMT) – a test for malaria that tells within 25minutes if a fever is malaria, using only a few drops of urine.

On this episode you'll learn:

Malaria diagnosis is a field that hadn’t evolved for over a hundred years until the 1970s, and then again today. So the time to big disruption has reduced from 100 years to 40. The big innovation has been to remove the guess work in whether someone has malaria or not.
The UMT product took 8 years to get to market, and has been sold commercially now for two years in Nigeria and Liberia only. Their strategy is to target the private healthcare sector first.
They started developing the product in the market crash of 2008 so funding was a challenge, so they had to bootstrap and form strategic partnerships.
They competed for public grant funding in the life sciences sector from the US or British governments.
They were able to raise equity funding from different funders during the development stage. When the technology was developed and in people’s hands, it made a difference to their funding, and they received much more interest from investors.
They’re distributing to both business and consumers. They’re working with major pharmaceutical distributors, but are also allowing customers to purchase directly from them.
They have distribution partnerships with a range of suppliers, mostly of the online marketing kind.
They went to the Nigerian market first, because of the size of that market, because they wanted to get to scale in a market where the impact could be felt and where they could eventually achieve a lower price point for the public sector. And Nigeria has a large private health sector which is key to their growth strategy.
Their partnership with John Hopkins was due to a key part of the technology they licensed from them. They have a global, exclusive license from them, which was critical because of the credibility it has brought and the resources they’ve drawn on to help them succeed.
They do their early stage research in the US and later stage development in the target market. This meant bringing blood and urine samples into the US, and the red tape was such a challenge. But it was something John Hopkins was able to help with, since they had extensive experience with this.
John Hopkins also provided some crucial early introductions that helped with funding and access to important resources in the product development.
They implemented a major clinical trial (2000 participants) that built compelling evidence that helped with investor funding.
It was published in leading journals (see link below)
Functionality testing had to show that a certain skilled level of operator can do the tests, and that an acceptable product shelf life could be.
Eddy’s vision is to build a portfolio of products that could help populations in the developing world with a fever, to help in the initial diagnostic stages, to know what has caused the fever and remove the presumptive diagnostic process in patient care.

Links to resources

fyodorbio.com
Clinical Performance Evaluation of Fyodor Urine Malaria Test (UMT)
Journal in Journal of Clinical Microbiology: Multicenter Pivotal Clinical Trial of Urine Malaria Test for Rapid Diagnosis of Plasmodium falciparum Malaria

Connect with guest

Contact website form

FIP 88: Using Cryptocurrencies in Social Enterprise with Elizabeth Rossiello from BitPesa Oct 10, 2018

Show notes

This week we're kicking of a mini-series on high-tech for business within a developing country context. We're talking to Elizabeth Rossiello, who co-founded BitPesa Ltd in 2014 and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Elizabeth has worked in Kenya as a Microfinance Analyst and Investment Associate since 2009. She is an expert in East African financial product development and establishing best practices in risk, governance and IT for local banks. Prior to her work in East Africa, she served as an Analyst at Credit Suisse in Zurich and a Robert Bosch Fellow in Frankfurt. She speaks four languages and has a Masters in International Finance from Columbia University’s SIPA.

On this episode you'll learn:

Cryptocurrency can be compared to how letters (snail mail) used to be sent to another country, and now email has replaced that. Cryptocurrency, or Bitcoin, was created to replace the traditional way of sending money to another person. Bitpesa is sending money around the world a lot cheaper than traditional means. They're increasing liquidity for companies.
Bitpesa's business model is to take a small percentage on each international money transfer transaction.
Bitpesa doesn't hold Bitcoin overnight so they're not affected by the fluctuating price that the currency has seen.
Elizabeth built the simplest test case of how it could work. She hired one engineer and one UX (User Experience) team. They built it on the Mpesa system in Kenya to test it out. It took a month and a half. Their first customer traded in January 2014, and they relaunched in April with a market-ready product.
The regulatory framework was setup for traditional money transfers, but Bitpesa showed they were doing the same thing just using a different tool to do so.
Working with regulators still makes up part of their work today. It's about ensuring they're following the rules, and keeping the focus away from what the technology is.
They've had plenty of setbacks, such as being sued by Safaricom in Kenya, and potential investors who learnt from their company and ended up creating something similar.
Bitpesa started out on a small $50k seed investment which they used to build the prototype, and then raised follow on investment from international investors. Follow on investors were only willing to put in cash for 6-12 months runway, so Elizabeth says it was a really inefficient fundraising process.
Elizabeth advises to enjoy the ride, because it's a long journey. Enjoy building a company that you want to work for. And take care of yourself along the way.

Links to resources:

Bitpesa
Blockchain for Development: Emerging Opportunities for Mobile, Identity and Aid, a 2017 report from the GSMA Digital Identity Programme, which talks about the potential for blockchain for numerous use cases, including for identification and payment transparency.

Connect with guest:

Elizabeth on Twitter

FIP 87: Audience Stories – Ravi Shankar from AcceleratED Oct 03, 2018

Show notes

Today, we speak with Ravi Shankar of AcceleratED on how Finding Impact has helped the company as it doubles its operations during its growth phase, for which learning from others’ mistakes has been critical.

On this episode:

Ravi noted that there had been multiple podcast episodes that have been helpful to his company.
An episode that was particularly helpful to Ravi was Episode 78 with Raghu Krishnaswamy. Ravi took away Raghu’s focus on “casting” and building a diverse culture within a team. Some tricks that AcceleratED borrowed from the episode include:
- Hiring: The company is now taking a “casting” approach to hiring and employing a portfolio approach to human capital management.
- Retainment: Thinking through the employee life cycle and applying user center design aspects to it.
- Culture: Connecting with people on a personal level, not just a professional level. They have created a “Hobby Hour” to share interests from outside the office.
Ravi noted that when any company is very small, it is easy to develop a culture but can often result in people becoming copies of each other or suffering from group think. Now, AcceleratED is building an internal culture guide to share both successes and vulnerabilities.
Ravi was struck by the irony that AcceleratED itself is a behavior change-focused organization, but it is only now that they are incorporating some of the behavior change elements from the business model back into the operations of the company.

Links to Resources:

AcceleratED
AcceleratED on Medium

Connect with Ravi:

Ravi on LinkedIn

FIP 86: Audience Stories - Rachel Sklar from Pit Vidura Sep 26, 2018

Show notes

Rachel Sklar takes the guest seat this week to tell us how the Finding Impact Podcast is helping her with her business in Rwanda. Rachel runs Pit Vidura, which offers pit latrine emptying services in dense urban areas where there are no sewers.

On this episode you'll learn

Apart from helping to improve her business, the podcast has helped Rachel get back into long distance running! When she's back at her desk Rachel listens to bits again and writes down the parts that were the most insightful and sends it to members of her team, inviting them to listen and come back to her to have a conversation about it.
The podcast is confirmation to Rachel that they're on the right track. Sometimes they have to make stuff up on the fly and under pressure. So later when they listen, they realise others have taken their course of action as well. The podcast also confirms that not everyone has the answers before they start.
Rachel and her team are not from a business background so some of the knowledge, in the form of frameworks or processes, is really useful.
They also hear that others are doing the same thing they are, but they speak about it using more formal language and approaches. So it allows Rachel and her team to redevelop their strategy in a more structured way and speak to people externally using the right language.
She loved the episode with Lauren from GetIt about how her food distribution business soon became a logistics business, since this is what their pit emptying business has become.
Fausto's episode was also instructive in that he shared how the early days were so scrappy, and they survived from winning a few prizes and surviving off of customer revenues, which is how it's been with Pit Vidura. Fausto was also open and honest about the emotional side of a startup, and the thoughts of failure, which Rachel experiences.
The interview with Jonathan Lewis also resonated with Rachel, about a sector-wide problem which is the lack of diversity in social enterprise, and which she's now building into the values of her company to intentionally confront this.
The episode with Rob Mills helped Rachel talk about social enterprise to more traditional investors, and help them understand what a social enterprise is.
Rachel really enjoyed the episode on unit economics with Steve Andrews. As with many social enterprises serving the base of the pyramid, you need to be so clued-up on your unit economics and use it as a management tool for decision making.
We talk about imposter syndrome, where you feel you don't have enough of experience, knowledge, skills, (insert next one here!)... to build a business. Rachel has found listening to the podcast has made her realise that everyone's in the same boat - no one really knows everything they're going to do from the beginning and there are times you've just got to do your best.
Human capital is a constant struggle and something that doesn't just go away, but needs constant effort behind a clear strategy. Cycling through employees, particularly during the early days, is an approach others take as well, whilst jealously guarding culture.
Also, we discuss a very open style of management, where you get to know your team personally, as described by Raghu Krishnasway.
Rachel suggests a way to improve the podcast could be to touch on people's personal careers or lives, maybe even an activity, a quote, a joke, or something, so that listeners get a little more sense of their personality.

Links to resources:

Lauren Russell Nkuranga from GetIt Episode 57
Fausto Margicot from PayGo Episode 44
Audrey Cheng from Moringa School, Episode 43
Pit Vidura's IndieGoGo Campaign
A Fireside Chat with John Lewis Episode 21
Rob Mills from Social Finance Episode 8
Steve Andrews from New Light Africa on Unit Economics Episode 46
Anastasia Uglova from MindSky Episode 61
Raghu Krishnaswamy from Off Grid Electric Episode 78
Pitvidura.com
Pit Vidura on Twitter
Pit Vidura on Facebook

Connect with Rachel:

Rachel on LinkedIn

FIP 85: Audience Stories – Emily Woods from Sanivation Sep 17, 2018

Show notes

FIP 84: How to Build a Relationship with Your Core Customer Base with Lindsay Stradley Sep 12, 2018

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FIP 83: Marketing in Emerging Markets with Amanda Arch of Kasha Sep 04, 2018

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FIP 82: Building an Iterative Product Testing Platform with David Henia Aug 29, 2018

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FIP 81: What mobile data can do for social enterprise with Guilherme Lichand Aug 21, 2018

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FIP 80: The case for not collecting impact data – and what to do instead with Loïc Watine of IPA Aug 15, 2018

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