How This Startup From South Africa Is Disrupting Hearing Related Illness

July 19, 2017July 19, 2017 ~ Venkata Gandikota

I first met De Wet Swanepoel during Slush Impact conference in 2015 in Helsinki and spoke with him about his startup, the hearX Group, and their offerings in creating good quality, accessible and affordable diagnostic and related solutions for people with hearing related illnesses.

During our very own InnoFrugal conference in Helsinki this past April in 2017, we invited hearX CEO, Nic Klopper come and speak about how they are disrupting the industry sector for hearing illnesses with their “new tech-low cost” approach.

Now they are launching a new product called hearScope and I decided to have a small chat with De Wet and being the frugal innovation evangelist that I am, also wanted to support their new Indiegogo campaign for this device by helping spread the word!

Before going to the Q&A, you need to know that hearScope is the world’s first Smartphone Otoscope for accurate diagnosis of ear disease.

Here is a video showcasing hearScope:

credit: hearScope

According to the folks at hearScope-“The high-quality variable magnification otoscope “pen” connects to a smartphone running the hearScope application. hearScope is a diagnostic aid for doctors, nurses and healthcare providers but can also be used by parents to track and monitor their children’s ear health. In future, hearScope will be enhanced by our image analysis software and artificial intelligence systems to provide accurate, automated diagnoses of the most common forms of ear disease.”

So, you want to know more and help them? They are doing an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. This is a link to their landing page where people can go to receive more information about the hearScope and sign up to receive up to 35% discount for when the hearScope launches on the 1st of August. : https://goo.gl/fyrUcd

Here below is the Q&A with De Wet I did the other day:

Me: How many years have you been in the industry and what inspires your passion for healthcare solutions in hearing related issues?

De Wet: As a hearing health specialist my interest is to see access to ear and hearing care become affordable and sustainable – for everyone, everywhere.

Me: Why did you start hearX and what are the different offerings from hearX?

De Wet: The hearX vision is about seeing healthy hearing for everyone, everywhere. Our mission is to provide affordable access to hearing care using digital solutions that anyone can use, anywhere

Me: Why do you believe that the hearScope is important?

De Wet: Ear infection is the 2nd most common reason kids go to a doctor. It affects 330 million people every year and most have no access to accurate diagnosis for preventative treatment. hearScope is about offering a low-cost diagnostic tool that works with your phone to capture an image of the eardrum so that a remote diagnosis can be made that can direct treatment in underserved world regions. It’s about revolutionsing access to ear care and pushing preventative care forward.

Me: Why Indiegogo?

De Wet: As a social impact venture and technology we wanted to involve the wider community to be involved in the impact we’re after. Indiegogo provides a great platform to showcase the technology and its purpose so that we can put this solution into the hands of the world.

Me: What is the “Frugal” nature of hearScope?

De Wet: So the frugal nature of hearScope is that it will be at least a 50% cost-saving on existing video-otoscope technologies. The real value however is that our artificial neural network can diagnose the 5 most common ear conditions with accuracy >80%. This means access to ear care becomes affordable and available in lower income settings where its currently inaccessible.

Mantra For C-Suite Executives In Finland & EU Who Want To Really Grow Their Business (Hint: It Involves Emerging Markets)

September 1, 2016August 31, 2016 ~ Venkata Gandikota

I would like all C-Suite Executives, be they from Startups, SMEs or Big Corporations, to repeat this “Mantra” every day right after they wake up.

Domestic Growth Is Not Enough For My Business

Exports To Developed Economies Is Not Enough For My Business

Growth For My Business Should Increasingly Come From Sales In Emerging Economies

The last part, especially, will not magically happen. They will need to understand the market and create or co-create solutions that B2B and B2C customers in those emerging markets will buy. There is definitely space for high cost solutions but more often than not the solutions that are needed are those that have these Frugal Innovation attributes: quality, sustainable, accessible and affordable.

Brookings Institution’s Financial and Digital Inclusion Project Shows Kenya Topping It’s List Amongst 26 Emerging Economies

August 24, 2016 ~ Venkata Gandikota

Brookings Institution recently released a report titled “The 2016 Brookings Financial and Digital Inclusion Project Report”

Their 2016 report assesses financial inclusion ecosystems in 26 geographically, politically, and economically diverse countries based on four dimensions of financial inclusion: country commitment, mobile capacity, regulatory environment, and adoption of selected traditional and digital financial services.

Source:https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-2016-brookings-financial-and-digital-inclusion-project-report/

Brookings has launched these rankings in 2014 as a way to examine access to and usage of secure, affordable formal financial services among underserved populations and released it’s first report in 2015. Back in 2015, Kenya also topped the list.

Read the whole report here.

Nice Read On GSMA’s Mobile 360 Africa Conference 2016 Overview

August 12, 2016August 12, 2016 ~ Venkata Gandikota

Great read on GSMA’s Mobile 360 Africa conference:

1. APIs: a bridge between mobile operators and start-ups in Africa- Especially

(a) Monetisation: Start-ups must understand their path to monetisation and also the monetisation path for mobile operators;

(b)Support: Start-ups need to seek external support in understanding how mobile operators work and how to work with them. This will help them reach out to the right people within the operators and to craft the right value proposition; and

(c) Product Differentiation: Operators are keen on propositions that are unique and will give them an edge in the market. This differentiation should be reflected when reaching out to them.

….
Barriers that still prevent start-ups in their markets (Rwanda and Kenya in particular) to fully realise the benefits of operator APIs. These barriers include:
(a) Operator’s maturity in the management of APIs (e.g. clear and actionable documentation);
(b) Lack of access to stable sandbox environment;
(c) Difficulty in identifying the API ‘point of contact’ within the mobile operator;
(d) Integration issues with some APIs (often requiring to connect through a VPN); and
(e) Lack of standardised APIs across markets.

hearScreen – mHealth Solution for Hearing Problems & Costs Six Times Less Compared To Traditional Devices

August 10, 2016August 10, 2016 ~ Venkata Gandikota

I first met DeWet Swanepoel on the sidelines of the biggest Nordic Startup Tech Festival Slush in November 2015. He was representing his South African based startup hearScreen, as part of the Finnish Foreign Ministry’s Global Impact Accelerator at Slush Impact

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) “Over 5% of the world’s population – 360 million people – has disabling hearing loss (328 million adults and 32 million children). Disabling hearing loss refers to hearing loss greater than 40 decibels (dB) in the better hearing ear in adults and a hearing loss greater than 30 dB in the better hearing ear in children. The majority of people with disabling hearing loss live in low- and middle-income countries.”

Also the latest Global Burden of Disease Study estimated that 1.23 billion people had some form of hearing impairment (20 dB or more), of which 414.5 million had moderate or greater hearing loss.

So basically what we have is a situation where 1 in 7 people in the world have some kind of hearing impairment.

The reason I really like “hearScreen” apart from it’s affordability is the fact that it is clinically validated and can be used not just in low-infrastructure places like emerging markets but can easily be imagined as a clinical tool in developed markets.

Also according to the team behind hearScreen – “The screening process for hearing loss takes under one minute and can be conducted by people without audiology training. The data from the screening test is then easily uploaded onto a cloud-based server for evaluation.”

Screen Shot 2016-08-10 at 19.19.52

hearScreen is a true frugal innovation – quality, accessible, affordable and sustainable solution

GSMA’s Ecosystem Accelerator Has Released It’s Insight On Tech Hubs In Africa And Asia

August 5, 2016August 5, 2016 ~ Venkata Gandikota

GSMA has released it’s insight on tech hubs in Africa and Asia.

In Africa alone GSMA have identified 314 active tech hubs: Accelerators, Incubators and others while there are 287 in South and Southeast Asia , a number that keeps on growing on a weekly basis.

Wharton Knowledge – The Power Of A Missed Mobile Call In Emerging Economies

August 3, 2016 ~ Venkata Gandikota

Quick.. If you want to have an effective way to do mobile marketing in emerging economies, what do you do?

Well… try this proven technique.

There are different names for it.

In India it is called missed call.
In Philippines it is called miskol.
In Africa it is called beep.
In Indonesia it is called memancing.
In Pakistan it is called flashcall.

In an insightful article on the culture of missed calls, UPenn Wharton takes us through the origin of this issue 5 years ago and how it is thriving in the here and now.

If one has ever heard the concept of “collect calls”, this must sound familiar. This is the concept of reverse charge call where the calling party wants to place a call at the called party’s expense.

Under the concept of “Missed call marketing (MCM)“, a similar thing is happening in the emerging economies.

According to an article on The Hindu, Ozonetel Systems– a pioneer and a leading provider of on-demand cloud communication services in India has handled 700 missed calls in 9 months leading upto February 2016 and will handle a billion missed calls in a year.

Consumers call back in response to ads targeted at them, but hang up without connecting.

Companies then call them back or send messages with deals, coupons and offers.

More than that, the companies gain valuable information of customer interests, preferences and profiles so that ads can be more precisely targeted. Ozonetel has been handling missed calls for the past four years.

Such has been the power of the MCM phenomenon that ZipDial, an Indian startup that was successful in capitalizing on the prevalence of “missed calls” and was bought by Twitter in early 2015.

The way in which these MCM marketing firms work is quite simple and is illustrated in this figure below:

According to the Wharton article, the missed call marketing has even crossed the income divide, where in recently a luxury housing project had a “Give a missed call to xxxxxxxxxx for more information” tucked away at the bottom of each page.

Politicians and political parties, have been using them to reach to their followers and for their membership drives.

Employer provident funds and Banks are using MCM to help their members with tracking their account balance.

Nestlé’s Bunyad is an iron-rich product specially focused on school-going children to prevent iron deficiency. The brand offered free talk-time top-up to anybody who gave a missed call and listened to the Bunyad message. “We called the user back through an automated system, educating them on the issue,” says Jafri. “The response was way beyond our expectations. Also, we now have a database of these listeners to engage them further with Nestle Bunyad.”

How big is the business in India? There is no simple answer. Three years ago, The Economic Times put it at Rs. 5 billion (approx 75 million USD). But that was in the days before Big Data came into the picture. “Trial prices start at Rs. 1,000 (less than $15) a month,” says Sunil Jain. Add a substantial dose of number crunching and the bill could shoot up to 100 times as much. “The size of the market is difficult to estimate,” says Rajesh Jain.

EcoPost is Recycling Plastic Waste Into Business Opportunity in Kenya

July 26, 2016July 26, 2016 ~ Venkata Gandikota

Saw this really inspiring business initiative in Kenya called “EcoPost”.

EcoPost uses 100 % recycled plastics to make aesthetic, durable and environmentally friendly plastic lumber for use in applications ranging from fencing to landscaping.

By starting this business they are actually tackling issues that in the context of Kenya are quite important such as plastic pollution, urban waste management and deforestation. As a business, they are able to create employment and also at the same time because of the sustainable way they are proceeding, they are actually doing their small part to create an environmentally friendly Kenya.

January – June 2016 Are The Hottest Months Recorded So Far

July 24, 2016 ~ Venkata Gandikota

So, 2016 is on track to be the world’s hottest year on record.

According to the World Meteorological Association:

June 2016 marked the 14th consecutive month of record heat for land and oceans. It marked the 378th consecutive month with temperatures above the 20th century average. The last month with temperatures below the 20th century average was December 1984.
……

The average temperature in the first six months of 2016 was 1.3°C (2.4°F warmer than the pre-industrial era in the late 19th century, according to NASA.

NOAA said the global land and ocean average temperature for January–June was 1.05°C (1.89°F) above the 20th century average, beating the previous record set in 2015 by 0.20°C (0.36°F).

Year to date Global Temperature