Villgro Kenya has invested $40,000 each into into Maisha Meds and Turaco, two companies working to improve health access for low income Kenyans.

Maisha Meds is a software platform for ensuring that rural pharmacists and clinicians effectively purchase quality affordable medicines and pass on subsidies to patients. The funding comes with mentorship and technical expertise to develop their business model and scale.

The system provides rural patients who often visit local pharmacies first for basic care with quality and affordable drugs purchased through the Maisha Meds platform. This helps tackle the challenge of market access for pharmaceutical companies and providers, ensuring that high quality medicines are affordable by patients and that counterfeit and substandard medicines are excluded from the supply chain.

According to Jessica Vernon, Maisha Meds CEO, “The mission of Maisha Meds is to develop systems to improve access to high quality and affordable medicines.  We are incredibly excited to work with Villgro in this mission, and have heard wonderful things about the support that Villgro provides companies working to scale health technologies in East Africa.”

Turaco which offers health loans bundled with insurance so their clients can get care whenever a medical emergency arises.

“Turaco is changing the game in healthcare financing for emerging consumers. We are thrilled to have the support of Villgro to launch our innovative insurance and health loan products in Kenya and Uganda.” Said Ted Pantone Turaco – Co-founder & CEO.

“Finding sufficient money to pay for healthcare is a major problem for a big part of society, which causes many people to delay seeking treatment until their condition is more advanced, and more expensive to treat. At worst healthcare costs are a primary factor pushing people back into poverty. We’re excited about Turaco’s experienced team, and innovative and scalable approach to solving this problem.” Paul Belknap, Villgro Kenya’s COO stated.

Villgro Kenya commits to supporting East African based health start-ups with seed funding, customized guidance for start-ups to scale and access to industry experts and stakeholders for product development, market knowledge and downstream investors.