Amy Fehilly is the co-founder at Eyebou (UAE), a company developing a solution using AI for eye-screening children to detect vision disorders.
“At Eyebou, we are using technology to make eyecare accessible and affordable around the world, even in areas with low connectivity. We have built a vision screening tool which can detect a variety of vision and eye health-related issues using only a smartphone app” Fehilly said.
Eyebou started its journey collaborating with SOS Children’s Village and UNICEF Colombia to screen the eyes of over 5,000 children in foster care. Of these children, 60 per cent had never seen an optometrist. The tool aided the detection of visual acuity and strabismus in over 45 per cent of the children screened.
Eyebou represents Fehilly’s commitment to merging healthcare expertise with technological advancements for equitable access to health services.
Hyma Goparaju, PhD, is the co-founder of Avyantra (India), a tech start-up that developed a machine learning tool to help with early risk assessment of neonatal sepsis and treatment decisions.
“Neonatal infections account for nearly 33 per cent of newborn deaths in India, and while preventing deaths such as these is possible through provision of quality healthcare, many mothers and children in rural areas often fall victim due to the lack of adequate health infrastructure. Our platform aims to address this gap by aiding early diagnosis of neonatal sepsis through artificial intelligence,” Goparaju said.
Through a pilot with a government hospital in Hyderabad, over 1,800 babies and 1,000 mothers have received AI-enabled neonatal sepsis risk screening and testing.
Judith Okonkwo is the visionary founder of Imisi 3d, a pioneering virtual reality (VR) company based in Nigeria. With a background in architecture and a passion for technology, Judith has been at the forefront of promoting immersive technologies in Africa. Her journey began with the realization of VR’s potential to revolutionize various impact sectors, from education to healthcare. As part of the Venture Fund’s largest investment cohort to date, Imisi 3D explores how to best develop educational content design according to curriculum needs and connectivity constraints of schools in Nigeria.
“Imisi means ‘inspiration’ in Yoruba – and that is what’s possible with these technologies, that you can inspire, that you can do it in multiple dimensions and all the possibilities that come with that,” Okonkwo said.
Young entrepreneur Kavindya Thennakoon, age 28, is the co-founder and Head of Product at Tilli (Sri Lanka), a start-up that has a developed game-based, AI-driven social-emotional learning tool for 5- to 10-year-olds. To date, Tilli supports over 15,000 beneficiaries, including learners, parents and teachers.
“Developing as open source helped us adopt a stronger community-centered approach…we now break down our features into stand-alone modules that can be reused and repurposed by educators, game designers, and content creators interested in building or measuring social-emotional learning skills,” Thennakoon said.
Nompilo Matsebula is Head of Customer Success at eSuSFarm, an agri-fintech startup that specializes in tracking and providing advanced agricultural statistical data to smallholder farmers to increase their productivity, market share and credit access, contributing to the overall efficiency of the agri-value chain.
“eSuSFarm is more than a platform, it’s a catalyst for transformative change, technological empowerment and inclusion. We’re reshaping agriculture by empowering smallholder farmers, including women, to become beacons of sustainable growth in the digital age,” Mtsebula said.
Snjezana Gomilanovic is the CEO and co-founder of Om3ga in Serbia, a start-up spearheading a deep learning speech-to-text solution, Daktilograf, for Slavic languages. Among the 350 million Slavic speakers worldwide, 14 million suffer from hearing loss conditions. Existing speech-to-text solutions can help children and young people overcome barriers in their education but are often inaccessible in less digitally competitive countries.
“Our speech-to-text solution can be used as a conversation-facilitating software, learning aid, or education assistant during online classes and in integrated classrooms. By becoming open source, we are giving the opportunity to others to build on top of our solution and develop similar products that will help the disabled community,” Gomilanovic said.
Stephanie Sy, CEO of Thinking Machines (Philippines), founded the company upon returning home from Stanford and roles at companies including Google in San Francisco. Recognizing gaps in data science in her home country, in 2015 she embarked on an entrepreneurship journey to empower communities.
“Data gives people who come from very different backgrounds and experiences a common ground on which to stand,” Sy said.
Today, her team of 170+ with 67 per cent female leadership specializes in AI and geospatial datasets for climate and development. In collaboration with UNICEF, Thinking Machines created AI for Development, which helps democratize data to empower decision-makers and duty-bearers in low-resource contexts to carry out interventions in many sectors.
