“The Intel Tech to Market Accelerator Program is the perfect platform to bring together young entrepreneurs to share their plans for turning their computing technology ideas into business opportunities, and to showcase those plans to potential investors. We are very excited two of our very own will be representing the country and will get the opportunity to compete and present their startup ideas at Silicon Valley,” said Suraj Shah, Intel East Africa’s Corporate Affairs Manager.
One of the tech start-ups selected from Kenya, mHealth Solutions Center, seeks to develop and market mobile and web solution that will help with the early detection of cervical cancer in women of all ages, something that is currently not well addressed by Kenya’s health infrastructure.
“This is an exciting opportunity for us not only to travel and meet like-minded individuals but also get a rich Silicon Valley experience. We look forward to meeting venture capitalists, angel investors, mentors, incubators and hopefully through these new connections raise $1 million in private seed capital in the next 12 months,” said Dr. Monda of mHealth Solutions.
The mHealth team is made up of four individuals, Dr.Monda J.M.N, Nickson Nyakambi a student of medicine and App developer, Michael Omaria a pharmaceutical technologist and IT Consultant and Maxwell Ochwang’i an entrepreneur and a student of medicine. All the members of the mHealth team are trained in the medical field and everything they do in IT and tech is more passion-induced than classroom-learned. mHealth has already developed 2 technologies that promise to address the current fragile nature of maternal health and cancer detection, prevention, and cure in Kenya.
Harmonics on the other hand made up of Duncan Mwebia – a Technical expert, Jesse Kaburu – an entrepreneur and Phides Mugo – the team’s mentor and marketer, is an ICT start-up that will provide a cloud based platform to help high school administrators manage their data and information using any internet connected device.
“Our project intends to streamline management of school administration by providing a unique and innovative solution. The application will be hosted on a cloud platform eliminating the need for schools to incur extra expenses of server acquisition and other costs or risks associated with running an in-house application. We are looking forward to the Silicon Valley trip, to network, to gain new knowledge and hopefully create contacts that will help us propel our business to greater heights.” explained Phides Mugo of the Harmonics team.
Flagging of the students and handing them their ‘air ticket’ to travel to Silicon Valley in the US, Cabinet Secretary in the Ministry of ICT, Fred Matiangi, commended the entrepreneurs on their excellent innovations that saw them get into the global finals. He spoke highly of Kenyan innovators and lauded Kenya as the hub of the East African region’s Silicon Savannah.
“The Kenyan government fully supports innovations and we are working tirelessly to find a way of helping local entrepreneurs scale up and optimize their innovations. We have massive resources in terms of talent in Kenya and the government is committed to helping you make money from your ideas. Look out for a major announcement from us in the next few months,” said Cabinet Secretary Matiangi.
The Intel® Software and Services Group (SSG) is a global division of Intel Corporation. It was created with the main aim of reaching developers and exposing them to new ways of optimizing applications to run on Intel chips inside phone, phablets, tablets, and PCs. SSG currently aims at reaching over 400 developers and having 100 new applications created locally over a period of six months that would offer users differentiated experiences across mobile phones and tablets running on Intel® Architecture.
