Renee Ngamau — transcript
Checkups COVA
This transcript is generated automatically by YouTube and has not been checked by a person. It misspells names and mishears words, particularly around Kenyan English and company names, so read it as a guide to the conversation rather than a quotable record. Each timestamp opens the video at that moment.
0:02 good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to episode 11 of African do podcast where we tell stories of Africans doing uh great entrepreneurial things and today we're very privileged to have a good friend an old friend uh Miss Renee Gamo as our guest and she runs a a business which we learn more about but she's also had a very interesting life and career and we'll get straight into it Rene welcome to the afrian podcast thank you very much I'm very excited to be here excellent so I think let's get straight into it um I was reading up on you and um we've been friends for a while but you know um when you know people socially sometimes you don't get to know them professionally yeah so it was interesting to read your LinkedIn profile and to read up um on um checkups medical and what you guys are doing the interesting work you're doing there but let's go back you're a lawyer
1:01 way back way back you're a lawyer by training yeah I am and um but you you you have not had you did start out in the law yes but you have not had a typical lawyer's career you've kind of moved you know you've done uh journalism youve done radio you've done you've doubled in I think you were in financial services for a bit and you've done in-house councel for so let's let's let's start there not at the very beginning but maybe what made you study the law and then how did you transition and what triggered you at the various points you were triggered to move into the various things that You' have done in your career yeah okay so so obviously Leonard when you say you know we've known each other uh for a while what you actually mean is we are childhood friends yes exactly yeah and you're right when one knows one from childhood sometimes we don't look at that professional aspect but what led me to
1:55 become a lawyer was really because I grew up in a single mother household as you know yes my father died when I was 3 years old in fact I hadn't quite made my third birthday okay my mother chose not to remarry mhm and in that Epoch everything that could go wrong went wrong because the concept of an unmarried young woman with children was not acceptable in society and so I we grew up with me watching her very very keenly getting stripped off of all of the wealth that she and my father had put together very very quickly by the time the body was hitting the ground she already had a demand note for everything including my baby brother's crib at the time wow and uh the land was taken away um we were cut off from from my father's family which is not untypical of that time and even of now of women's experiences when their husbands die yes and I watched her through the years have
2:52 an experience of what I felt was a discrimination by virtue of her being a woman and refusing to be under the wing of another man very strong independent woman because that's all she could be yes and I wanted to be a lawyer because I wanted to help my mom MH I wanted to go fight for her land and for her right to be single yes and then um after having studied the law very quickly the Allure of uh corporate law um pulled me and I started off actually in oil and gas so I worked for an oil company here in Kenya that's um french-based yes and then moved from there and went to uh do corporate law and um um practice corporate law in uh one of the top five corporate law firms in the world yes in London and I say this not just to impress you but to impress upon you that you can start anywhere and end up anywhere end anywhere yeah and um so I did that for quite some time you know
3:51 grew up the corporate ladder and all the rest of it um but what was really lingering for me at the back of my mind was always that thought of what happens to those who are less privileged who cannot speak like I do and don't have the kind of education and exposure that I have what happens to people like my mom yes and so my kind of dubling was always in human rights in um rights of those who are vulnerable and when I moved back to Kenya I met with um in fact during covid so I'm fast forwarding this conversation quite a bit I met up with um a lady who was supporting formerly imprisoned women Theresa and Jog yes um and she ran an organization called clean start okay and I was helping women at the time to start and grow their own businesses during the covid period yes because a lot were getting laid off or their salaries were being reduced to where they could not
4:43 survive with what they had still along this theme of helping my mother you can see how this is like a running theme for me yeah and she said to me how come you don't help women like me and I asked her who are women like you and she told me the story of what it's like to be imprisoned okay and I'm a lawyer yes and I had never heard about this okay I even remember doing my fourth ter because I did my undergraduate here in Kenya yes and we went and did fourth term in which was you get attached to a local Court a magistrates Court yes and I was attached to kibra which is a huge slum in the outskirts of Nairobi and we'd see these people be brought on Monday with drunken disorderly selling without a license selling outside the designated Zone um loitering with intent to commit prostitution yeah and you to have them in this batch and uh all of them you
5:33 they you know their names would be read out and they'd say uh you know present present present and then they've been asked how are you pleading and someone has clearly told them to plead guilty so they sayali I have agreed yes and you could tell that they didn't really know what they were agreeing to their understanding wasn't there it wasn't but someone so them to just agree and then they would be given a fine of 1,000 or one month imprisonment next okay and that was the end of my interaction mhm and she was taking me through what happened so what did you discover and this is what I discovered that when you confiscate Tomatoes worth 300 Shillings yes or sweets worth 100 shillings from a woman who is hawking them outside the designated area and to be inside the designated area costs 100 shillings in the license alone yeah and then you find
6:25 her 1,000 Shillings or one month imprisonment yeah you are punishing her for being poor okay not for a crime okay because if she had 1,000 Shillings she would have been inside the designated Zone and she would not be selling Sweets she would be selling something higher value yeah here's the thing the landlords would send agents to the courts and they still do the minute that woman is fined and she does not take the option of the fine and therefore goes in they padlock her house they remove all of her things and padlock the house the things are sold if she has any children who are over four the children immediately become Street children so if you check you'll find that on Saturday mornings you'll have an influx of Street children on certain streets that's because Friday night was kamata kamata Friday which is the Roundup now yeah the children under four go in prison with their mother so they
7:24 instantaneously become imprisoned for a crime that was not theirs their mother's crime oh but if you can call it yeah if you can call it that yeah but there's no Financial allocation in the National budget for those children that means that for that month three months 6 months whatever her her period is they will be malnourished they will be they will not have blankets they are likely to develop upper respiratory diseases for the children who are over four years of age social services before covid would take them in but our social services in Kenya is stretched Beyond Compare yeah if she does not have a family that will take those children in they immediately go on the street now here's the bit that will really disgust you it costs 100 shillings to go with a boy who is under the age of 10 and when I say go I don't mean a walk girls over 10 go for 50 Shillings a
8:24 pop a shot as it's called do the math and I don't mean just the numbers and who's driving this when that woman comes out yeah she's traumatized she has only the clothes on her back and she now has children that have been sexualized that have been violated in order for them to eat I didn't believe this so one of the ladies took me to one of those Cinema places you know the the mabati places the tin roof places that where people go and watch football and whatnot and I was watching kids disappearing to the back with young men and then coming back adjusting themselves wiping their mouths pulling up their clothes with young men sorting their belts zipping up buttoning themselves I was watching this happens in the same country you and I live in systemized whoa and when she comes out if she has nothing this child will calculate and say Mom I can go make us money now we've raised a
9:42 criminal in fact we've generated the Next Generation criminal because it will start there and it'll move to a gang and because this child is so traumatized they have no qualms about attacking you with a knife running a gun breaking into your school your your car into your home they have no intention of going to school it costs too much and it doesn't make sense for them and this came because she didn't have 1,000 Shillings the equivalent of $10 now of $8 it made no sense for me so I started helping these women to start and grow their own businesses and we'd have mixed classes and by mixed I mean formerly imprisoned and persons who would never experience prison and I'd say that you're not allowed to say anything you're not allowed to tell your background everyone hit the road running and there were 15 weeks and what I noticed is that these women had a higher rate of
10:43 growth because they knew the cost of failure okay and they were building businesses in ways that were incomparable generally it's not that everyone was building a business but this particular group of women were moving and they were called operating and they just needed to understand what do I need to do next and it there wasn't there wasn't discomfort in getting to the whatever the next is yeah and so in this in supporting them we started a program that was inside the prison starting to help women to learn skills including business skills before they come out because in that month or three months or whatever it is we have a captive audience and because it's such a short period of time unlike men who who usually go in for longer periods of time for women 7 6% of the women who go into prison today will go in for less than a year on Petty nonviolent poverty related
11:36 offenses okay so they come out and they have the skills we create a system where the skills that they have plus the business knowledge that we give them plus the environment that we put them in where we aggregate them yeah would get them to grow into business and then eventually Branch out on their own now we need to give them money so that they can at least find a place to go and stay so we'd give them 15,000 Shillings as a grant you can go and stay and we'd find these little rooms you know 4,000 Shillings 5,000 Shillings a month 3 months by that time she'll start making her money if she follows our program so where is this business so the bus set up because this whole problem started with a licensing issue so the businesses are businesses that we have curated within the organization depending on where she is yeah so for example in kaj they're
12:25 doing uh honey they are so it's different places and different different things corative like uh it's yes it's based on a coopertive so it's a number of women who have come together and we've designated them so if you've been out for a period of time you go into the business development and the ones who have just come out go into manufacturing and production okay why because they still need to settle in you've settled in a little bit more you can go to the next level and you're saving up money so that you can be able to buy enough stock depending on what it is that you're doing to become independent and yourself start hiring the women coming out on the pipeline okay so we have it really well laid out yeah and here's the thing MH women go through three major three major challenges okay number one I need a roof over my head and food on the table for
13:11 me my children and the parent that I'm caring for yes usually an older mother yes number two so that we can deal with with the grant for the first three months the business will pick up and she'll be able to feed clothe and house her children I I should have mentioned of this that 92 2% of the women in prison are single mothers without Family Support okay uneducated or undereducated early pregnancy many have have undergone FGM and they do not have family support and so she is everything when we say baba mama she is Mother and Father yes so that's the first challenge is roof of my head food on the table number two challenge is educating my children yes particularly if she has a Bright Child who's called to a national school immediately National schools won 40,000 Shillings or or their abouts which about $350 now of school fees right at the
14:08 door in order for the heart to take up that opportunity again we can get we will come and harass Leonards and other people and go to church and mosques and things and say we've got a bright child who requires an education and people are willing to give for that the third is Healthcare okay now if it's an accident or an incident people will pay give money for a one-time event like for surgery yeah or for travel if it's a chronic disease where every single month money is needed then people get tired you can't be on my budget the challenge is this hypertension diabetes arthritis upper respiratory diseases they will require every single month between 6 6,000 to 60,000 mhm in medication and Labs depending on how far gone you are and I'll tell you what brought me to this one of the days one of the ladies who we work with she formerly in prison doing really well she had hired four other
15:11 people her business was growing she was not only present here she was also exporting her we she was selling um uh household goods uh Crockery dishes that kind of thing says to me Renee you'll have to come and visit me in prison I say say what so you have come and visit me in prison because my mom's wound has not healed so I say dial back her mother has diabetes okay her mother's diabetes is far gone and she has had a wound on her leg yes and diabetes one of the things is that the wounds don't heal so it's fested and fested and she's got ganger and they have to amputate the leg and she says to me she's going to need 70,000 Shillings she's going to withdraw immediately all the money from the business at the time was about $ 35,000 Shillings she's going to borrow another 35,000 Shillings from a because she knows nobody's going to give her the money she wants to
16:07 raise about a 100,000 Shillings she's going to ask everyone to contribute a little bit and she knows she's not going to be able to pay it back and she knows she's going to be charged with obtaining by false pretenses and the penalty for obtaining by false pretenses is three years in prison yeah but she's calculated it that if she can save her mom's leg and leave her mom with ,000 Shillings she will she will do the time whoa her eldest was 10 m seven and three so how did that story end I'll tell you how the story ended in a short while but just let that sink for a minute that there are people going to that that is the cost someone's making that call someone's making that call and is going back to hell to save her mom and her kids that that call has to be made and so I said we've got a we've got to raise this money sir this this that's not going to be
17:10 happening not to mention what happens to these four other women who now are suddenly unemployed and have been left without any money so we start looking for fundraising and this is how I know that people don't fund raise for chronic diseases because we couldn't raise the money in the end we were going into pockets and things in order for her not to have to go down this route and I began to ask ask myself what happens to women like these what happens to those this is the one I know how many others are there who didn't have access to me who didn't tell me who I'm just wondering why could you go why would you go back after all the work that we've done and then I started now in interviewing the other women and interviewing women in prison and finding out what were their healthare needs and Le it's it I think this entire period had for me was just such a shock
17:58 to understand that we live in completely par parallel universes m in the same street in the same houses cuz these are domestic workers they are Factory workers they are um lowlevel employees they are waiters they are all making similar calls even when it doesn't end in prison if you can't find people who will fund raise for you m then the next step the next step is a so that you get the money very very quickly then you'll figure need to do and you'll figure out with the shock and that means for those who have even a little bit of assets you start selling the assets so this cycle of poverty is being contributed to by Healthcare we are all one major disease away from poverty from disaster everyone who's had cancer in their family yeah knows how expensive it can be and cancer can be diabetes can be asthma can be arthritis it whatever it is at whatever Inc level but You' have
19:00 gone a bit I dare say you have gone down you you have really taken this granular I have yeah in the sense that it's a statement that is quite common in Kenyan terms when you hear people say uh we're all one uh one major illness away from Financial ruin yes but this is I think a bit more what you're telling us about is slightly heavier than that because this is the vulnerable of the vulnerable you know it's it really is um a systemic issue so then you discover all this and you collect all this data and you have all this information um but before I even get there when you you were you were telling us the story of um the the startup um capital of 15,000 and the ladies you give to give a a better start who's the Wii who's the funer so the funer is so through clean start yeah which is the organization that was started by formally imprisoned women for formally
20:03 imprisoned women because they couldn't find help anywhere else they had started to raise funds and to find funds that were willing donors uh Charities family foundations will to them and so it's the money that they were receiving rather than us just Distributing it we thought how do we create a pipeline that enables to us to regenerate so this was you working through uh a clean exactly and so I started with um just helping with the Enterprise end of things and then now moving into let's create a system that enables us to fund raise for ourselves and then kind of then going into governance so I'm so I'm and all of this is volunteer work with so Can Am I am I right in saying that this was not a planned Journey this was not a planned Journey it was H it was H it was kind of like um you peel one layer of the onion and you find this under there and then you come and peel
20:58 the next and and is would that be correct to say for you it's not only correct at every level I was quite sure that as soon as I create this system and it works done I can stop I can step yes I have done my bit you know sayara it was real and then I'd get to the next one and I think what really called me Leonard is the fact that but for the grace of God there go I but for the grace of God had I had a different education had I been born on the different side of the tracks yeah that would be me m that would be your mom yes your sister we haven't even started talking about what happens to men when they have to make this choice because they're men who do yes and that if you consider that over 80% of our population is making less than $5 a day this is the story of 80% and I'm being generous here yeah of our population yeah how is this okay wow okay so let me bring us back now so let
22:07 me tell you how the story ends let's come to how the story ends because you have now got me racing in a in a different direction to where I thought we were going but go ahead yeah so I meet up with uh Dr mam yes he is already running checkups medical and they are doing covid testing remember that this is during the covid period yes they're doing testing so whenever you need they're coming home and taking samples and they can go and do the testing and they are um sending the the the reports and you can get your certificate and fly and I'm doing quite a bit of travel during 2020 2021 so we we're interacting a lot with them and I keep thinking to myself you've got all of this equipment how do I get health care for this women how does this need meet this Supply mhm and so we are kind of having the conversation so just to clarify checkups medical existed existed before I showed
23:05 up before you showed up yes and it you're using them to get your tests done your covid tests every time you travel you need a valid test and that's what you using them for and that's what I is that how you meet them and that is how in fact how I even find out about the the test the end the business is a mutual friend who says stop lining up at wherever I used to line up and get this done at home okay they'll come they'll come to you they will come to you in fact let me introduce you okay perfect and so this is completely coincidental coincident mm God's way of creating what he wants making what he wants to happen happen yes so I have this idea of how now Co is coming to an end yeah I have this idea of how actually these these women can be able to access Labs my biggest thing was just Labs because I didn't know about all the rest of it if they can access Labs lab tests
24:02 cheaper then we actually have a better diagnosis we can find out earlier we can help people earlier etc etc I've got my women in mind yeah Dr mocha is running his business doing what he is doing and he is doing it very very well indeed and we have a series of conversations at the end of which it becomes clear and apparent to both of us that if we are going to create the product that we now call checkups cover I need to be willing to stop doing what I was doing and come and do this and come and do this and so 2023 comes around I make the leap I make the investment I step in and we now start working as co-founders on checkups Cova why because I need a solution to this is too big a problem to to solve what you've seen yeah now yeah I want to take you back to the story of my young lady because I don't want to leave you hanging yes she didn't her mom didn't have her
25:09 leg amputated okay we discovered that there's a product mhm that comes out of Japan MH that is about a half an inch maybe 3/4 of an inch thick that you can put around a festering wound a surgical wound a a um uh burn even third degree burns and it helps generate stem cells MH increase blood flow yes regenerate flesh and heal the wound wound I'd have never discovered that had I not said yes to we need to get this resolved I am foolish enough and maybe proud I don't know whether it's Pride or just just sheer dog just stubborn yeah I'm stubborn enough to think I'm going to solve this problem so now we find this product and for people with diabetic wounds postsurgical wounds wounds that won't heal for people with third degree burns you know the gas explosion hor you wrap them in this and there's a protocol around it what is it is it a sheet or it's a sheet it's literally a she sheet that's that's
26:29 that thick but it's got quite a lot of nanotechnology in it okay okay and you wrap it in it and and which means that they can be treated from home okay which reduces the hospital bills remember my thing is all about how do we make this affordable where do you find this out from this this product we us we we're literally does seem like a mainstream product no it's not but we are scouring the world okay we find uh places where there is they sell um um cancer medication at fair prices so medication for rare diseases at fair prices so that people who can't afford the commercial price can access them access the medication yeah and so we're now trying to find how do we bring in chemotherapy to those who need it so that people aren't dying because they don't have money MH so we're find find out you know how when you go looking for something it comes looking for you yes so what we are
27:33 looking for is looking for us I think sometimes what we must do in life is create intent and then hold on to it like a four-year-old okay you know how like foury olds jump or three old they jump off the table knowing you will catch them the how the when the where you are this is not the point they've got their Superman cap on they are leing your job is to figure all of this out I think there's a value in being permanently like a 4-year-old and I suspect there's some part of my brain that is okay and now we have the beginnings of a product checkups cover yeah and there are a lot of people who had worked behind the scenes looking for some version of this but it finally clicked so tell us now what is checkups cover so to tell you that I've got to tell you this story Okay so we start off with remember I was about how do we get um doctor's Services the whole Gambit of
28:34 services into into space yeah at the price that they can afford yes so he ask what price can you afford well they can contribute 100 200 500 Shillings daily they can be able to commit to that so I say okay with 100 shillings daily what can we do we can we get them to commit to 100 for 100 100 shillings for 100 days do the math in 100 days in three and a half months they will have paid up 10,000 Shillings it's 10,000 Shillings okay what can we do with 10,000 Shillings that takes care of them and their loved ones notice I didn't say their families their loved ones which means we have to take care of the mother with a fast drain leg and the babies so we close the loop on what already existed at checkups medical which is that we had doctors lab facilities very very high through lab facilities Diagnostics x-rays Etc and medication delivery MH so I say if we
29:33 closed this we can actually predict the price MH here because you have all the infrastructure the entire infrastructure the entire services and the talent yeah if we can can we offer it to these women at a lower cost because we don't have to make profit at every single point yeah we want to make an overall profit you can think about it from a lsum perspective there you go so if we do we can bring down the cost to between 45 to 25% of what is being charged externally so we can the percentage you said 45 45 to 25% of what is charged in the market what is charged in the market in other words if you go to our website today M www. checkups med.com we promise you that if you pick three out of our five products we will 4X 4X your healthare benefits so if you buy Healthcare benefits for 1,000 Shillings you will get 4,000 Shillings worth of healthcare benefits that we will
30:42 distribute in uh doctor's consultation Labs diagnostic medication specialist Nest dispatch lab dispatch and Sample collection and we will come to where you are so you never have to travel to us why because if that woman has to leave her stall for a day it didn't just cost her bus Fair it cost her that day's earnings and if she has to come two or three times in a month she will lose that spot and move back to the places that are less favorable in the market cuz someone else will take that spot yes and her health care is dependent on her earning and her earning is dependent on her healthare and and if we make her come to a clinic she has to pay for the costs of infrastructure she has to pay for the receptionist and the rent and the utilities and all the rest of it so now we dispatch nurses MH so we do that for a year and we're doing it inching the NS
31:44 is how they have an app so we are very Ai and Tech enabled very very Ai and Tech enabled okay and so we've got a proprietary app and we've worked around it so that we can also now now we're solving many problems women and how we think everyone has to be included in this story I read somewhere 22,000 nurses without jobs in Kenya I'm like AIG really I'm weak I see the riots and and the demonstrations by doctors who are not being deployed or who are being underpaid or who are serving as medical interns you remember that shenanigan and I'm like in this country with all these chaos that I'm all this yeah so now the the the the next expansion level how do we incorporate all of these people who are clearly underemployed or unemployed so that they can serve all of these women I'm still thinking about women who are in the markets and in other places without having without this
32:45 team of professionals having to move to Nairobi and without me having to house them because that's going to cost me a lot of money and so we create an app think of us as an Uber for nurses how does the app work so the doctor when you make a teleconsultation the doctor will instruct the nurse or the lab on what the nurse or the lab tech are the eyes and ears of the doctor okay so they will be dispatched with information on what they need to do in terms of observation uh sample collection um and here's the thing ah here's something else that I I must tell you uh if you think about when whenever you've gone to see the doctor right have you ever told the doctor where you live no have you ever told the doctor where your window faces for example or has that ever come up no okay consider this a person who keeps coming in and bringing their baby for having
33:40 respiratory diseases okay unless someone goes to that home and notices that the window to the bedroom where the baby sleeps in the housing there where they live opens to the window of the kitchen of the flat next door where they cook with gas or they cook with a jico and that there's very little in this wind the smoke is the smoke is going here no wonder this baby always has a respiratory disease but when the person comes to the doctor will that question ever be asked or even explored it will not come up you just have a sickly child MH but when you go to the home this includes the observations that you can make on a patient so the doctor now um so the I'm trying trying to get to the nuts of the process um the Lady or the the woman in the marketplace yeah maybe she's feeling un well so she gets she calls what does she do she calls she calls yeah she speaks directly to a
34:42 doctor yeah doctor takes down Basics decides it's a doctor who decides whether a nurse dispatch or what is needed as the next steps okay they will then instruct the nurse through an app MH the nurse then goes complete with instruction to the woman in the market is yes she has what we call a clinic in a bag it is basically everything that you have in a physical Clinic that can do everything from if she found a crisis any kind of Crisis diabetes hypertension cardiac crisis she can be able to address it on the ground okay okay with this bag with this bag so it's very very heavily equipped yeah she is very very heavily trained yes usually she we do have some male nurses but I'm going to say she because usually it is is she MH um and so she will arrive on the ground and she will do whatever the instructions are the doctor is able to speak with the
35:36 nurse and with the patient because the app is WhatsApp based okay because we don't want people carrying another app cuz you know when you download an app and you don't use it for about 3 weeks what do you do it it either goes dant to or you eject it you delete immedate space constraints yeah yeah there you go yeah so and all of this I'm giv you this for free but I tell you it costs us because we did all of those mistakes yes until we arrived that please do not add another app on people's phones okay okay so it's WhatsApp based so it's WhatsApp based now this information is being relayed real time to the doctor very AI um enabled diagnosis which enables the doctor to then say check for this check for that check for the other I'll give you a simple example Y how many forms of diabetes do you know it's not a trick question oh uh two type A and B yeah type one
36:33 diabetes type two diabetes right okay do you know that there is a third type of Diabetes called Modi no mature onset diabetes of the young okay which presents mainly with teenagers but looks like it could be type one or type two diabetes but it's not okay it is a third type of Diabetes mhm and it exists in our environment mhm now if typically I'm quite sure there are even doctors were saying say what now yeah typically you would be diagnosed and then it would go into you must have type a uh type one or type two diabetes with AI enhancement in the right kind of questions you can diagnose for type this type of Diabetes called Modi the effect is for our teenagers and for our young persons that we are not treating them in a way that is not effective for the specific kind of diet diabetes that they have but if you haven't been trained as an MD as an Mo
37:32 as a CO as a clinical officer for this type of diabetus you revert to type one or type two which is not wrong it's just the extent and the limit of what you know yeah we're able to do that because of our Tech enablement so we so our doctors are doing much better diagnosis even though they are GPS okay okay okay so now we have a better diagnosis we now have a better plan of action and because we've had the general observation of the place part of the prescription could very well be you need to move from here you need to shut that window you need to put a humidifier in the room you now we're getting a lot more practical and pragmatic because we want the end result to be your your health and in addition to that we can now offer the pharmac the pharmacy the medication that you need and remember because you paid for something that we for xed you're getting better value in
38:26 your medication and we will source for it so I want to close this Loop we have come H the lady is with the the nurse practitioner now is at the market she's seen the lady she's made the diagnosis say maybe U their tests to be done she's able to do them there or watch or she can bring them she can bring them back she can bring the samples she can take the samples and come back with them she'll come back and if it's she's outside of Nairobi we she can call chain them back through Logistics companies that we have agreements that you have worked with okay and so they come back to you you get you you make you run the test you establish what's wrong then she goes back or what does she do then she will she can go back or she can make a call hi Mama so and so yes uh this is the doctor mhm H these are your tests first of all the lady in the market will
39:18 get her own test results okay she'll receive she will receive them by WhatsApp okay and she will receive simultaneously a call from the doctor saying this is what we have found this is you see that number this is what it means this is the good news this is the part that we need to take care of this is the proposal for how we go about addressing the challenge that you have right now healthwise and medication the the treatment regimen starts the supplements what you should stop eating and start eating what you should do should you make some movements should you every single aspect of it are you in pain for those who have arthritis or other chronic or acute pain come into our facility and get MLS laser pain therapy so that we can get rid of the inflammation so you can be able to have better range of movement so you can be able to go back into the market and operate more freely we are in the
40:14 business of Health we're not in the business of sickness wow so what what what um this is this journey for you started uh 2023 right um when you now formally recognize that you have to come in and and you now do this full- time I now do this full time so what's we're 2025 February we're in 2025 February what numbers are we talking about where where where where have we reached what impact are you having uh what does it look like now so the impact where we have reached right now so in 2024 we did 56,000 families wow we did not advertise it was entire enely organic entirely organic it was I got your number from M so and so and it wasn't they just weren't coming themselves they were bringing their families wow and so we had created we've created these health care benefits that she was buying into 100 days of 100 shillings when you go around for the marry go around and the Chama you know
41:19 how women are they will take that money and a part of it will come towards paying their medical bills or paying into buying into the healthcare benefits and I haven't finished the loop for you yet because our Healthcare benefits can be shared with whoever you want now traditional insurance will say you can only share mother father and children direct consanguinity we don't care we don't care how you're related or whether you're related or not if you nominate that person they can access and take um use your Healthcare benefits do you limit the nomination numbers no we don't limit the nomination numbers and you will see your utilization reports so keep topping up incidentally we don't even limit um we don't even say that you have to pay a certain amount before you can access service yes pay and start accessing immediately because people pay
42:06 for healthcare when they need it we don't have a saving culture because we don't have the money to save at that level whatever we say about it that is a different cookie I know my one shilling is four you know your one shilling is four yeah and so whether it is your parents aunties and uncles relatives ER factory work workers employees um Children of the house help and what does that look like on the app so do I have to key how do I bring them on you will key in whoever it is that you want I say me the paay of the of the premium I'm the one who determines I'm paying for this service and these are my people and these are the and you can even say for I am limiting them to use this so that one person does not deplete or you can say you know it's a free-for-all when it depletes let me know I will add more money M and what if it goes over one year we don't care your
43:01 Healthcare benefits do not expire if you have paid you're in you're in and you keep you just draw down and draw down and draw down and what else do we do we do a wellness check when you come in 33 critical points so that you know exactly your state of health why because it enables you to budget and understand what will my health care needs look like at the door as opposed to waiting until you're in pain and discomfort and then you're rushing to the doctor sometimes when it is a bit late and a lot more expensive so so what are you you're not you're not an insurance company per say you're not a an indep you're like a a hybrid of an insurance company with medical facilities that's ruled into one is that a fair assessment so that is the beginning of a fair assessment yes and then now let me tell you about the survey that we did cuz this is a weird
43:59 and wonderful world yeah so then we noticed that the women were coming and they were accessing all of our services they were bringing their children their parents ER workers that they had um hired in their small kibanda you know the ones who are helping to cook the chapati and take out the trash and they were bringing them and their children and then they'd get to a point where they'd use the um Pharmacy benefits and then they'd say uh give me a day or two um when they' get the prescription they said give me a day or two let me get some money and then I come and we're like okay that's interesting that now we're delaying care because maybe this was a chronic they they have a chronic disease and they've run out of the medication benefits so now they're having to go and look for money somewhere else and then come and pay for the medication which they already getting a huge discount
44:53 yeah and the answer was sometimes I just don't have the cash right now mhm it's it's an affordable service it works I love it but today I don't have a cash I don't have the cash so we thought okay we need to plug this so now we've added on something called Medical Credit so instead of going to look for money under the bed with the relatives with the which is we were seeing a lot of that with apps that will charge you a lot money we will curate who you can borrow from who is on our list that ensures that you get the money at a fair commercial price so that you get the money today and pay for it today and get your health care now instead of delaying it who are these because Fair lenders there you go I knew you were going to ask that question I was really I went there I went there who are these Fair lenders yeah yeah well start by thinking the
45:57 difference between the a shock and a bank okay in fair enough yeah a shock is 120 130% and it's compound and it's increasing and they will come and stand at the door of this woman and not allow her to leave the house they will take the door down they will take everything out of her house we're back to my original situation yes so if I can even get them to get to a bank an mfi or a circle MH I have liter Lally saved them fair enough so let's start there and which ones of them are they that get that there's an opportunity here now here's what we didn't know on the other side for you and me we will who borrow large amounts of money yes the bank will insist that we take life Assurance yes so that they get their money in the very unlikely event if I die that there you go a guy gets his color he's not playing death will not do our SP just like that okay
46:58 however we were then reading surveys that were saying that early default or restructuring of loan repayments with mfis and Banks is usually because the main borrower or someone who is very close to the borrower has a disease and the borrower comes back and says or has fallen sick and the borrower comes back and says I need to use the money I would have paid you to pay for a medical bill can we restructure my loan I skip this month we start again from next month in other words there's a risk inherent in that primary borrower okay and they hadn't addressed this risk here we have a product the lender hadn't addressed that the lender has not addressed the risk here we are little us checkups medical with checkups cover which is a product that can be embedded in the loan that der risks default at this level mhm mhmh he risks it not just for the borrower yes
48:02 but those who are closest to the borrower who would derail the bank's repayments even the borrower with good intent even a borrower with he'll be derailed by factors beyond his control of course yes so now the banks and mfis are saying hang on just thank you for the story you've just told us we have another problem over here can you fix this and we're saying okay let's see how our product can fix this and this I think is the power of Entrepreneurship that is homegrown yes local context local context my bz word thank I love it vital yes and an agility that we have because we can read the textbook till we're black and blue in the face qu ground yes that's where really matters and we're saying of course our product can drisk your circumstance how do we co-create this and then the banks say to us and I'll bet you you have this as well Je get those little texts from your bank that
48:59 says you are pre-approved to borrow up to yeah you you're good M come and get more cash come and get more cash have you gone for the more cash no no I avoid them like the plague and the reason you avoid them is because yes I first at the time maybe I don't need it or I I feel this is just another they're just they just want to sh just they're just trying want to get the behind me any have have you been ill during any period of time when you've received that text no just think from the first time you received them cuz they started this about a year ago right okay to date is there any point at which you've been ill you've gone to a hospital you've gone to a hospital even with an acute condition you have a headache a cold a bad flu Etc but you never thought I'm quite sure for you you were able to afford it yes but for those who didn't they never thought why don't I
49:54 tap into this facility yes for exit and deal with my medical problem because this I can pay back it's not going to cost me as much as going retail yes even going retail because how much will you pay on medical uh when you go for a consultation ballpark give me a number um, 1,500 th 1,500 how much will you pay for the most basic test let's say a malaria test yeah I would say another thousand another thousand um medication yeah depending now you get the malaria maybe two 3,000 2 3,000 so you've paid 4,000 5,000 for a singular visit yes right yes okay so if we take 4,000 and I say to you need to find a th000 you can you can instead of paying 4,000 retail or 5,000 retail you can pay buy health care benefits and I will give you 20,000 Shillings worth of care MH which turns your one visit into five or four four visits yeah and what you will do if you don't have the 5,000 Shillings is that you
51:06 will pay back the bank 5,000 Shillings at 18% interest but you have your medication today not just for today for this particular whatever the ailment is malaria let's say but for you your wife your children your parents your house help her children whoever else that you need for as long as you have not comp completed or depleted the utilization of these Healthcare benefits would it be a deal or not great deal so 56,000 families in year one of operations right uh and year one was when year one of this particular product was 2024 okay so you've just finished year one so we've now we have you're entering into year two complete proof of concept yes and not only do we have the proof of concept the rate at which the services are being demanded right now is overwhelming us really is overwhelming us and I thank God for this so let's good problem this
52:10 is a good problem to have because people are buying for their parents up country employers are buying for their employees Banks Insurance comp Banks and mfis are saying listen for all of our banked uninsured why don't we get them a product we've never been in the medical credit space can you guys figure this out for us and give our clients up to 4X worth of value you know I was looking at your website yeah and um to be honest I must confess that sitting with you now and looking at your website I actually thought you're older as a business or as as a healthcare uh service provider than you actually are because you're talking about one year so remember that checkups existed exist that's that's fine yeah that that I can see this particular product and this particular Innovation is 2 years old and I'll tell you why two yeah 2023 kov still existed in 2023 okay
53:17 Kover in 2023 was the year of Tears you're an entrepreneur you know this there's one year where you will make all the mistakes that you can make you will make some which you even think yo yeah what like why why do I find myself in that situation yeah so the part that I'm not telling you about is that 2023 um school fees where you paid you have to pay you have to pay school fees yeah so this product as it now is is the result of 2023 school fees but R you've also got some I dare say solid names uh but backing uh checkups medical um and uh funding is always top of mind for most entrepreneurs so how did you crack that one you know I am open like how much wine do does this place serve wine no no they don't even allow drinks yeah I'm tried to convince them but they don't yeah we're writing a petition so I can tell you the cute story but I prefer not to because
54:25 Founders we know the this yes it is of Tears Of course of like just please don't just come with the in fact just give us hankies give a bed sheet and we will cut it into pieces ourselves now the good thing is that we have had uh funders who have seen what is possible yeah um I can tell you for free and for nothing for every uh funer that we've had let I think we have sent we there's a here's a story there's a time in 3 months we decided we were going to Target 100 funds yes then we started and you know that work has to be done at midnight because during the day you have to run the business and we would be sending out emails uh trying to connect doing family trees who knows who who can connect us with whom pitching we did Air Miles as and you know whatever accommodation was one could afford yeah in whatever places um we've accelerated you know how
55:34 you go for like 1 million acceler we have accelerated ourselves I think to the end of the speedometer and while we we do have some really incredible backers I can tell you that it's not easy and this is not something that I would recommend a singular founder to do there is a myth about being a Founder you yourself it's you against the world yes that the emotional is heavy it's heavy it's heavy yeah yeah that when you can preach preach about it yeah that is nonsense even when you're two we still feel it it's heavy lifting and here's the other thing as a co-founder I can tell you because short of you being in the same house together okay if what you are are co-founders you even if you're in the same house together I'm not sure how that would work but what you need to have is Grace because the level of stress will make you chew each other's heads out and
56:37 everyone needs to understand right now in the moment that we're yelling everyone is yelling at everyone else that at some point everyone's going to need to calm down and do the work true and that this yelling is steam blowing off I've seen co-founders that could not could not stand the sight of one another businesses that broke up that were such brilliant ideas because we don't we're not taught the mechanisms of how to operate under the high level of stress that co-founders go through aged and nobody understands it because they see the shiny toys on the outside look at Leonard and blanos you know and here he is yes and so now let's just send a small WhatsApp with a note asking for like just you you you can afford like 50,000 shillings to give me for whatever or whatever not understanding that 50,000 is sitting between you and zero in the bank account
57:34 right now agreed and you've got to think through that 50,000 so then you become mean so your family doesn't like you cuz nowadays you're so full of yourself and you're not seen at home because every hour is on the dream and you are getting unhealthy because you don't move enough you don't drink enough water you're not taking care of yourself these are the Untold stories of founding and the space where we can go and tell the truth of how hard it is how many relationships are lost teenagers have gone Haywire mothers who would rather give up on the business because they can see that they are losing their home spouses who don't understand the co-founder and therefore turn their back on them not understanding that this is your person stepping into their purpose and perhaps your purpose is to be there with them and so businesses break ideas die people die young lives are happppy
58:45 also that we could birth a dream this is the story that is Untold this has to have a part two and I think we we we'll discuss and schedule but wow what a story I mean you've you've given us a lot to think about and myself personally as a Kenyan as a nairobian I know Healthcare is always at the top of what we're discussing um but I think um we'll give you a chance to just pitch your peit to the masses of what you're doing in in in a in a format that they can consume it and then we'll wrap up and schedule when we'll come back and and have this discussion in Greater detail thank you for the opportunity so so let me have a conversation with you just directly and ask you this have you or your loved one struggled with medical bills it's not uncommon it's not just you this is a phenomenon that happens at every single tier of the Kenyon and indeed the African society over 80% of
59:49 us at some point will be struggling to pay a medical bill and yet it doesn't have to be so if you are in Kenya or in Juba South Sudan you can access up to four times more in health care benefits for every dollar that you pay onto checkups cover so how do you do this www. checkups Med CC ksme d.com click on buy benefits and you will see everything that I'm telling you about and who can access these Healthcare benefits anyone in Kenya or in Juba in South Sudan right the way from kisumu to Mombasa moale to kajiado we have coverage in every single County for you your family your employees and your loved ones and if you don't have the money to pay for it right now give us a call on 01 50290 0111 05029 Z and let's discuss how we can help you access some money so that you pay for health care today rather than delay it and then pay for even worse outcomes much later on what we existed checkups
1:01:12 cover to do is to ensure that you don't delay health care because you didn't have money give us a call excellent Renee checkups medical at checkups cover is a product fabulous conversation thank you very much one for enlightening us on some very hard hitting and sensitive topics but real topics thank you for your authenticity and genuiness in the conversation and we wish you all the very best and we look forward to having you in the future to discuss where this journey has taken you yeah so ladies and gentlemen thank you very much for joining us episode 11 of the African do podcast where we tell stories of Africans doing uh this has been a fabulous conversation look forward to seeing you in episode 12 [Music]