Posts Tagged ‘emerging markets’
Sproxil takes on Africa’s drug counterfeiters
Not many tech startups save lives. may be one of them.
The company tags pharmaceutical products in emerging markets with a scratch-off code which is verified by sending a text message to Sproxil’s product authentication service. Sproxil was one of two companies to receive an honourable mention from the judges in the recent (having previously ) and was one of the most talked-about startups in the competition.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that are counterfeit but that rate could be as high as 50 percent in some developing countries like Nigeria and Congo. WHO calculates that 200,000 of deaths caused by malaria alone could be prevented if all antimalarials were genuine. The U.S.-based Center for Medicines in the Public Interest (CMPI) projects that in 2010, counterfeit drugs will be , an increase of more than 92 percent from 2005.
Drug companies have developed myriad methods to verify the authenticity of their products including RFIDs, barcodes and holograms on packaging, chemical tests and laser scanning. Unfortunately, most of these methods have either been compromised or are too expensive for use in emerging markets. Sproxil uses simple scratch-off codes, of the type used to top up pre-paid cell phones, attached to either the drug blister, packet or an entire pallet depending on who needs to validate the product’s authenticity. The code is single use and is sent by text message to Sproxil’s authentication service. In Nigeria, more than 1,400,000 pharmaceutical items have been labeled with Sproxil’s technology.
I talked to Sproxil’s CEO Ashifi Gogo about the market and business model. According to Gogo, Sproxil can provide the mobile authentication technology more cheaply than the pharma companies themselves, because it can aggregate multiple pharma clients. When asked about the other authentication methods most likely to compete with Sproxil’s technology, Gogo mentioned barcodes but pointed out that many phones in developing countries are not yet capable of photographing the barcode and sending it for authentication.
Currently, clients pay a few cents for each code and for the text messages. Since Sproxil currently gets a fee even if the user does not text the code, it generates revenue from unused texts. Gogo intends to switch from this flat fee model to a per transaction fee as the business grows. Sproxil also sends targeted ads to users who have authenticated a code. These ads have increased sales by 10 percent for one client in Nigeria in only 3 months.
Gogo foresees the authentication technology being used for other items such as wines and spirits (fake versions are a major problem in Asia, apparently) and luxury goods. Initially though, Sproxil plans to expand into Kenya and eventually India which has a huge counterfeit drug problem. Sproxil is not the only company out there using cell phones for verification. operates a similar scheme in Kenya.
Sproxil was founded in 2009, has 12 staff members and offices in Somerville, MA and Lagos, Nigeria. The company is privately funded and, according to Gogo, profitable.
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Intivation gives boost to solar-powered phones
Chinese mobile phone manufacturer just introduced one of its latest models, the V206, with little fanfare at the tradeshow in Monaco. But the V206 is no ordinary phone; it’s a low-cost, ruggedized and waterproof handset powered entirely by sunlight.
The V206 is just one of a new generation of low cost, solar-powered phones that use technology from Dutch company Intivation’s SunBoost chip makes it practical and cost-effective to charge small devices like mobile phones via the sun.
A single solar cell of the size that fits onto a phone does not produce enough voltage to charge the phone’s battery. The traditional solution is to use multiple, smaller cells in series, each of which boosts the voltage. This approach has several disadvantages, including sub-optimal performance when some of the cells are shaded, the higher cost of manufacturing multiple cells, and the fact that multiple cells have higher levels of defects that affect performance. SunBoost is a boost converter that amplifies the output voltage from the 0.3-0.6V produced by a single solar cell up to the 1.2-3.7V required to charge the battery. The SunBoost chip also has integrated Maximum Power Point tracking (MPPT), which automatically adapts to light intensity and ambient temperature to ensure that the solar cell operates at close to its maximum effectiveness in all conditions.
While the trend for mobile phones in developed countries is towards more expensive and power-hungry handsets, 1.6 billion people in the developing world don’t have access to a regular electricity supply. Not only is the electricity grid in many emerging markets unreliable, it’s also expensive, with consumers spending 15-20% of their incomes on it. If there is no local power, phone owners have to walk to the nearest town or pay inflated prices to a mobile charging vendor to charge their phone. According to Intivation, allowing customers to charge their phones from the sun boosts ARPU (revenue per customer) by 10-15% in semi-rural areas. Many African countries have more than six peak sun hours per day, making them ideal for solar-charging. Large parts of Asia and Latin America also get more than 4 peak hours per day.
The cost for the solar cell, modified battery, SunBoost chip, and related engineering is under $10 per phone. Mobile carriers don’t subsidize handsets in emerging markets, so it’s vital that the price point is low.Intivation’s Marketing Director Rik Wuts says that the “sweet spot” for a mobile phone in these markets is around $20.
Vodafone added its first solar-powered handset (which uses SunBoost) in its Spring 2010 global portfolio. The Vodafone 247, manufactured by ZTE, generates enough energy from one hour of sunlight to power 20 minutes of talk time from a 20cm2 solar cell. Intivation estimates that an average low-ARPU user should not need more than two hours of charging a day. Since these phones are targeted at particular emerging markets, they often have distinctive features adapted to that market. The , for example, includes an LED torch, a vital necessity in African countries with unreliable power supplies. This model is now being sold via EcoNet in Zimbabwe and MTN in Sudan, bringing the number of African countries using SunBoost-enabled phones to 13 since the first phone was introduced less than a year ago. Phones including SunBoost are now being sold in a total of 17 countries.
Intivation was established in 2003 in Amsterdam, has 20 employees and is privately funded.
Don’t miss , VentureBeat’s conference on the future of mobile. The theme: “.” Now expanded to two days, MobileBeat 2010 will take place on July 12-13 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. . Tickets are going quickly. For complete conference details, or to apply for the MobileBeat Startup Competition, .
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Assured Labor, a mobile LinkedIn for the developing world, raises $1M
, a social network for job hunters in developing countries, raised $1 million in funding from angels including former Skype chief executive and chairman Michael Van Swaiij, Kima Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners.
The New York-based startup focuses primarily on Latin America where it enables low- and middle-income workers to find jobs by creating resumes at Internet cafes and web kiosks. What’s interesting about Assured Labor’s model is that it has the power to make job markets in emerging economies vastly more efficient.
About two-thirds of the people in the markets Assured Labor targets lack home Internet connections, and many job seekers try to find work via word of mouth. Through the company’s Latin American property , a job seeker can write up their work experience and skills and post it to the site. Employers search for hires by location, education, pay range and skill set; they pay to reach out to prospective hires through text messages.
Founder David Reich, who developed the idea for the company at MIT’s Media Lab, said 60 to 80 percent of job seekers usually respond in less than a day.
After a pilot in Nicaragua over the past few months, the company has attracted 14,000 job seekers and is starting to run tests in other Latin American countries. Assured Labor earns revenue by charging recruiters who want to reach out to applicants.
Don’t miss , VentureBeat’s conference on the future of mobile. The theme: “.” Now expanded to two days, MobileBeat 2010 will take place on July 12-13 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. . For complete conference details, or to apply for the MobileBeat Startup Competition, .
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