One of Africa’s leading incubator programmes for female-founded businesses, the Standard Chartered Women in Technology Incubator (WIT) Kenya, has awarded seven women-led businesses with a total of $70,000 (Sh 10.5 million). This marks the conclusion of the 6th cohort of WIT.
The startups include:
Rhea Soil Health Management: Provides access to soil testing and agricultural extension services to smallholder farmers, analysing soil and providing results and fertiliser recommendations through a machine learning-powered recommendation system;
Imani Health Wallet: An e-Wallet that enables people to save specifically for healthcare. It breaks down large payments into piecemeal payments that can be paid easily over time before the healthcare service is required;
InstructKE: A legal tech company that leverages tech and data to provide legal assurance to matatu drivers and bodaboda operators. Its mission is to democratise access to justice and legal tools in the informal sector;
Know Learning Ltd: Revolutionises parental engagement by providing a user-friendly platform that bridges the gap between schools and parents;
PanaCare: A healthcare company that provides affordable telemedicine services, using USSD technology for consultations, remote monitoring, and health management tools, without Internet access;
Saidiwa Rides: Aims to bridge the gap between unreliable public transportation and relatively expensive digital taxis with a novel driver-passenger pairing model that permits daily commuters to share taxi seats and share costs;
Sign-With Us: A training institution that teaches sign language to anyone around the world with passion for it, or who may interact with a hard-of-hearing person in their line of work.
Launched in March through a partnership between Strathmore University’s @iBizAfrica Centre and Standard Chartered Bank, the programme attracted a pool of over 250 startups from different sectors spanning the agriculture, finance, transportation, health, and construction industries.