Businesses that can profitably scale and make a lasting impact on underserved and low income customers, can seem impossible. Yet, we are obsessed with finding, and funding, entrepreneurs who have the ambition to build exactly that type of high-momentum business – an e.M business that can fuel the economic resilience and vibrancy of underserved customers in emerging markets.
Fairplay supports the growth of e-commerce SMBs by fueling working capital for their performance marketing campaigns, inventory and logistics costs with a flexible, fast and friendly product. Fairplay uses data from the merchants’ online selling platforms and develops forecasting algorithms that allow it to predict performance, underwrite the merchants and offer personalized and flexible products to them. In addition to financial products, the platform also offers the merchants insights into their operation, trends, and market intelligence – a service that is currently unavailable on other platforms.
~68% of the working capital needs of most e-commerce companies are inventory, customer acquisition / marketing, and logistics cost. They often end up having to choose between these activities, as access to capital and funding is almost non-existent until SMBs reach a sizable scale – traditional fintech and banks are not designed / prepared to underwrite digital SMBs’ financial needs based on performance. This lack of funding can have a significant impact on business growth.
Cloudphysician is a healthcare services and med-tech platform enabling improved health outcomes by addressing the lack of access to quality critical care in ICUs across the globe, including tier 2/3 cities and beyond. Through its technology-driven tele-ICUs, Cloudphysician tackles the problem of limited ICU infrastructure and unavailability of skilled critical care physicians in remote locations. The Cloudphysician model and proprietary technology, RADARTM, make it possible for small hospitals in these locations to provide their patients better, more cost-effective and efficient critical care solutions.
Developing countries have chronic scarcity of critical care options per capita. Most ICU beds are concentrated in tier 1 and tier 2 cities, with limited or no critical care capacity in smaller districts and towns. For example, India has only 0.5 hospital beds per 1,000 people and 0.8 doctors per 1,000 people*.
LEAD’s mission is to empower India by making excellent education, accessible and affordable to children in underserved communities.
Based on a study in 2016, only 45% of grade eight students were able to read simple sentences in English and 43% were able to do a simple arithmetic division, a decline of more than 20 percentage points over six years.
