Nigerian health technology startup, Helpmum, has been awarded a $225,000 grant by the Africa Visionary Fund.
The startup also announced that it is one of 12 visionary partners selected to join the Africa Visionary Fund’s fourth cohort.
“HelpMum has been awarded a 225,000-dollar grant from the Africa Visionary Fund and selected as one of 12 Africa visionary partners for Africa Visionary Fund Cohort 4.”
The Africa Visionary Fund supports high-impact African social entrepreneurs by providing unrestricted grant funding to scale their impact. HelpMum is genuinely honoured to be selected for this impressive cohort of unique organizations,” the CEO said.
HelpMum and what they do
Abiodun Adereni, a Tony Elumelu Foundation alumnus, Founded HelpMum 2017.
Helpmum is an Ibadan-based health technology startup.
It leverages mobile technology to reduce the mortality rate among pregnant women and infants before, during and after delivery.
The startup provides training for community birth attendants in their indigenous languages via its e-learning platform
It also provides a vaccination tracking system for expecting mothers in targeted remote areas.
Mothers are registered to encourage them to get immunization for their babies.
HelpMum’s Many Grants
Helpmum is not new to grants and awards.
In fact, this grant from the Africa Visionary Fund is only the latest addition to its long list of grants since 2017
Helpmum’s got its first known grant of $5000 after emerging as Top 3 at a Nairobi health innovators challenge.
It received another $5000 grant from the Tony Elumelu Foundation shortly after.
In 2018 Helpmum won its first significant sum of $250,000 in grants from the Google Impact Challenge.
In 2019, the health tech startup won the Facebook Community Accelerator and was awarded $250,000.
24 winners selected in all. Four startups were chosen from each of the six regions represented.
The regions were ;Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, Middle East North Africa, Latin America, North America and Asia Pacific.
In the 2021 Waislitz Global Citizen Award, the healthtech startup was the only African startup among the four global winners.
The company targeted its winning then, at companies with some of the best COVID-19 responses and HelpMum would receive $50,000 as part of winning the award.
In September 2022, Helpmum was awarded a $250,000 grant by the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation.
The grant was to support its deployment of an AI-Driven Vaccine Intervention Optimiser – ADVISER, in Nigeria.
The startup is the first Nigerian company to receive that grant.
Earlier in June last year the startup emerged as the only Nigerian startup selected among 30 others from around the world for Google Social Impact Funding.
The healthtech startup has never raised VC funding, but may have received more than a million dollars in grants.
Speaking on why the company attracts so many donors, CEO Adereni ticked off a few factors including the evident impact of the “great work” at Helpmum.
He also mentioned keeping the donors abreast of the progress of the work.
“Upon receiving any grant, we take full responsibility to ensure that we share a regular update with our donors and funders. A YouTube channel was also put in place to showcase the impact of our work which also helps funders to find us. We are also very innovative in the approach we are using in solving the problem of maternal and infant mortality, which gets donors excited to support our work,” he said.
